So, who am I? Not a rhetorical question, this. Male, 27, Mumbai-based. On the verge of turning 28. Prone to sudden panic attacks at night when I wake up wondering about things like the future of mankind, the lack of womankind in my life, and the inability of most people to accept the fact that Tori Amos is pure genius.

The route to this alarming juncture has been long and fairly strange. I have run the gauntlet of everything from six years of professional dancing (late nights with fire-eaters and Govinda impersonators), through seven ears of athletics (no medals, thank you very much), to nine years of elocution (more success on that front, thank god for impatient judging and inept competitors), debating, theatre, hiking (in no particular order and done at random on the basis of my many mood-swings), one year of playing the guitar (I was 6, so, no, I can't really play the damn thing anymore), eight years of journalism (if you can call it that…my former editors all beg to disagree) and ten years of studying literature (and who among the well-read can blame me for that?)

This explains why my friends stopped wondering -- years ago, actually – why I do the things I do. Why, for instance, I took to wearing a black cap and blue shirt at all parties between my fifteenth and seventeenth birthdays; Why I decided I never would date a woman ever, promptly forgetting the rule at 22 and then making up for lost time by plunging from one wild relationship to another; Why I took up smoking menthol cigarettes for two years while in my teens, in the hope that impotence would make it easier for me to give up the idea of marriage; Why I sincerely promise to turn up at a hundred places on a Saturday night, and then stay home for 98 of them; Why I turn up at a pub smiling like a lunatic, then leave in a hurry when something ruins my mood for no apparent reason.

All said and done, however, they love me. They really, really do. And the feeling has never been anything but completely mutual.