Primalsoup

And I was just trying to survive Wednesdays

Worn into the neighbourhood like memory

We lived in the same neighbourhood, but I’d never met him.

Our fathers, however, were walking buddies, united by a shared fondness for early mornings, rising cholesterol, and spirited complaints about inflation and their adult children.
Their daily route was short, but their conversations were long.
And slowly, through these walks, I began to collect fragments of a stranger.

When he was thirteen, he’d had his tonsils removed.
At sixteen, he was a state-level shot put champion, a detail that felt oddly specific, and somehow impressive.
At nineteen, he got typhoid thanks to contaminated water at an IIT hostel.
By twenty-two, he was an investment banker fresh out of IIM, with an obscene starting salary and an equally obscene view of the Queen’s Necklace.

Initially, our parents were hopeful.
A well-employed, well-raised boy. An intelligent, independent girl.
Attractive noses. No traceable family history of instability. Fully vaccinated.
What more could one ask for?

But by the time he was a few months short of thirty, and I was circling the same milestone, our respective parents had revised their optimism.
We were now “still single” despite our many advantages.
And if nobody else seemed to want us, perhaps we were worthy of each other.

So we met. In Bombay.

He was no longer the investment banker.
He had walked away from all of it — the salary, the job, the flat — and moved into a modest studio apartment he shared with a friend.
His goal: to live with intention.
To give back.
To make the world a better place, one English class at a time.

By the time I met him, he was teaching children from under-resourced communities, working towards starting a school, and visibly… content.
He spoke with conviction but never performed his virtue.
He asked if I wanted to help. If I wanted to be his anchor. If I could imagine building this life with him.

I liked him. Truly.
He was decent, warm, and sharp in quiet ways.
And while I admired his path, I wasn’t ready to join it. Not yet.

I was still figuring out how to be a person.
I loved my work.. research, fieldwork, the whole messy ecosystem of human inquiry.
It didn’t pay much. But it gave me joy.
And I wasn’t ready to let that go in exchange for a role I hadn’t imagined for myself.

He didn’t entirely understand.
If money wasn’t my goal, why not pivot?
It was hard to explain that I wasn’t chasing wealth, I was chasing meaning too. Just a different kind.

Still, we kept talking.
Because we liked each other.
Because it was easy.
Because something between us made sense.

But sometimes, even when it makes sense, it doesn’t quite fit.
And the longer we lingered, the more we knew this wasn’t going anywhere.

So we left it where it still felt good. The walking path our fathers traced every morning is still there, worn into the neighbourhood like memory. Sometimes I wonder if we were just another conversation they never got to finish.

This is part of How I Did Not Meet Your Father, a recurring series in which I mine my non-existent love life for content, gently, and with context.