What I Am

There’s a man at every North Indian wedding who’s been there for six hours and nobody knows who invited him.

I watched him yesterday. Maroon kurta, slightly too tight around the stomach. He’d positioned himself near the buffet, not at the buffet, that would be obvious, but adjacent, close enough to monitor the chafing dishes, far enough to seem casual. When the paneer tikka was refilled, he was somehow first in line. Not rushing. Just… there.

“Bride’s side or groom’s?” someone’s aunt asked him.

“Oh, you know,” he said, laughing, waving his hand like the answer was floating somewhere in the fairy lights. “It’s all family, no?”

The aunt nodded. Wandered off. He stayed.

I know this because I’ve been that man.

House party, 2019. My friend Karan brought me, then disappeared. I stood in the living room with my beer, suddenly alone, surrounded by people doing that thing where they laugh too loud at stories I couldn’t hear.

Twenty minutes. That’s the socially acceptable window for standing alone at a party before you become “that guy”, the one everyone notices isn’t talking to anyone, which makes you even harder to approach, a social event horizon from which no conversation can escape.

I walked to the kitchen. Rearranged my face into something that suggested I was looking for someone specific. Opened the fridge like I’d been sent on a mission. Grabbed a beer I didn’t need. Stood there long enough that when I emerged, I could pretend I’d been busy.

A girl was arguing with her boyfriend near the speaker. Something about Goa. Something about “you always do this.” I nodded sympathetically when she made eye contact. Didn’t say anything. Just the nod. The universal gesture of “I’m witnessing your pain and I’m on your side but I’m not involved enough to have an opinion.”

She smiled at me. Relief, maybe. Or recognition. Someone who understood the emotional frequency she was broadcasting.

“He’s such a fucking…” she started.

“The worst,” I said, though I’d never met him.

By midnight, I’d helped clean up. By 1 AM, someone asked for my number. We never spoke again, but for those four hours, I had been there. Really been there. The party had included me in its membrane through nothing but my refusal to acknowledge I might not belong.

Karan texted me at 2 AM: “Bro where did you go?”

I was still there. He’d left an hour ago.

My cousin Vikram is 5’7″, makes decent money in IT, has the personality of lukewarm chai, and is married to a woman who looks like she wandered off a Netflix show and accidentally ended up in Pune.

Their first date, she told me about it later. He’d picked her up in a car that wasn’t his, borrowed from his roommate. Took her to a restaurant he’d been to exactly once. Ordered wine like he understood what “notes of oak” meant.

“So I’m thinking about starting a production company,” he said, according to her. “Short films, you know. There’s a gap in the indie space.”

“That’s amazing! Have you made anything yet?”

“Ah, pre-production phase. Scriptwriting, finding the right collaborators. Can’t rush art.”

She’d nodded. Found it visionary.

He’d watched a YouTube video about filmmaking the week before. Once. While eating lunch. He’d thought about maybe possibly considering looking into cameras someday.

Two years later, at their wedding, someone asked about the production company.

“The industry’s tough right now,” he said, shaking his head. “Waiting for the right project. Don’t want to compromise the vision.”

Everyone understood. Respected it, even. The filmmaker who was too principled to make films.

She still introduces him at parties as “working on some really exciting film projects.”

Coffee shop. Right now. Man two tables over, business meeting. Navy blazer, no tie. That specific outfit that says “I’m professional but creative” even though he probably works in marketing for a plumbing supply company.

“So what we’re really trying to do,” he’s saying, “is synergize the vertical integration with the horizontal stakeholder touchpoints.”

The woman across from him nods. Takes notes. Actual notes.

He’s not saying anything. I’ve been listening for ten minutes. It’s just words. Corporate mad-libs. But watch her face, she “believes” him. Or she’s pretending to believe him, which is the same thing. They’re both performing “business meeting” and the performance is indistinguishable from an actual business meeting, so it “is” an actual business meeting.

They’ll both leave here feeling productive.

I’ve ordered my third coffee. 300 each. 900 total. For coffee that tastes like burnt ambition. I could make better coffee at home for 30. But I’m not at home. I’m here, performing “writer at coffee shop” for an audience of no one, because writers sit in coffee shops, and I’ve decided I’m a writer, and if I write at home I’m just unemployed.

The man in the blazer just said “circle back” for the fourth time.

The woman is still taking notes.

My barber thinks I’m a lawyer.

I’m not a lawyer. I’m not even close to being a lawyer. But three years ago, on my first visit, he asked what I do, and I was between jobs—which is a polite way of saying unemployed, and “nothing” felt like the wrong answer, so I said “law” because I was wearing a blazer that day and carrying a leather portfolio that had my resume in it.

He nodded. “Corporate or criminal?”

I panicked. Picked one. “Corporate.”

Now, every six weeks, he asks about my cases. “How’s work, sir? Big cases coming up?”

“You know how it is,” I say. “Lots of paperwork.”

“These big companies, they keep you busy, no?”

“Can’t complain.”

Last month, he asked if I could look at a contract for him. His landlord was being difficult. I told him I mostly handle international mergers, contracts aren’t my specialty, but I could recommend someone. He seemed disappointed but understood. Said big lawyers like me probably don’t have time for small stuff.

I went home and googled “how to read a rental contract.” Spent three hours on it. Found two clauses that seemed problematic. Went back the next week and casually mentioned what I’d “noticed.”

He hugged me. Actual hug. Called his wife, told her about the brilliant lawyer who helped him for free.

I got a free haircut. He still thinks I’m corporate counsel for a multinational.

Last week, I showed up to a poetry reading because someone I vaguely knew was performing. Open mic night. I knew one person there.

She went up, did her poem, came back down, immediately started talking to someone else. I stood there. Beer in hand. Alone. Again.

The host called for the next performer. Nobody volunteered.

“Anyone else want to share tonight?”

Silence. The kind that gets heavier every second it continues.

I raised my hand.

I don’t write poetry. I’ve never written poetry. I had nothing prepared.

But I walked up to that microphone, pulled out my phone like I had something saved there, stared at the blank screen for five seconds, then closed it and said: “Actually, I’ll just speak from the heart.”

I talked for three minutes. About coffee shops. About performing writer. About how we’re all just pretending until the pretending becomes real. I’m not even sure it made sense. But I spoke with the cadence of poetry, pauses in the right places, emphasis on random words, that slight catch in my voice that sounds like emotion.

When I finished, they clapped. Someone in the back said “wow.”

A girl came up to me after. “That was really vulnerable. Thank you for sharing.”

“Thank you for listening,” I said, like I hadn’t just improvised the entire thing.

She asked if I performed often.

“Only when it feels right,” I said.

We talked for an hour. She gave me her number. Asked me to let her know when I’m performing next.

I haven’t texted her.

I’m not a poet. But for twenty minutes, I was. And those twenty minutes exist now. They’re real. She’ll remember them. She’ll tell someone about the poet she met who spoke from the heart.

The wedding crasher is at another wedding today. I can tell because he just posted a story. Different kurta this time, blue. But the same smile. Same buffet positioning.

Someone will ask who invited him.

He’ll wave his hand toward the fairy lights.

“It’s all family, no?”

And they’ll nod.

And he’ll stay.

Because that’s the thing nobody tells you about belonging: half of it is real, and the other half is theatre. Humans are social creatures, sure, but we’re also performative creatures. We don’t just live in society, we stage it, rehearse it, improvise it, and hope the audience doesn’t notice when we forget the lines.

Sociologists call this “impression management,” but that phrase is too sterile for something so deeply human. It makes it sound manipulative, like we’re gaming the system. But really, we’re just smoothing the edges of our own awkwardness in the hope that other people will meet us halfway. And they usually do, because they’re running the same experiment.

Everyone is performing. Everyone is pretending. Everyone is waiting for someone else to confirm the version of themselves they’re hoping to be.

And sometimes, all it takes is standing near the buffet with enough confidence that the world decides you belong there.