What have you been up to?

'But what have you been doing all these years? Where have you been?'
I felt then as if I had been called upon to justify the entirety of my existence, to account for the years I had spent here.

-Excerpt from Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide.

The reason I keep low these days mostly on social networking sites is because more often than not people ask me the same question; 'What have you been up to?'. And I feel exactly the same way the author describes in that passage. That people want me to justify the time I've spent. Don't get me wrong, I am always asking people the same question as a conversation starter but when I am asked this its not so much that person wants to know what I have been up to but mostly why I haven't been doing things people my age should be doing. Maybe I am reading too much into this, maybe I am disappointed with the answers I come up with, maybe I am really not happy with what I have been up to, what ever it is, it is one question that I have begun to dread.

What I'd really like my answers to be like when someone asks me next :

I have been touring the Bahamas.

I have been busy with research work for my PhD.

I have been busy signing a deal with umm [insert rich business tycoon/celebrity name]

I have been working on a script for a new television show.

I have been preparing for my speech that I'll be giving at [insert prestigious university name].

You get the point.

Anyhoo, to deviate from the topic I have always been very prejudiced when it came to Indian authors. I have avoided them on the pretext that most write unnecessarily complicated, long and boring books. The last book I liked was Shashi Tharoor's Riot (This was before people knew him and it was okay to say you liked him in public). The Hungry tide has changed my opinion, I am now shopping for more of Amitav Ghosh's books and will also catch up with other good authors whose books I have missed.

So what have you been up to?