In India, being in a joint family is one of the most common things. Most of the people don’t understand introverts. Introverts are wrongly assumed as lonely, anti-social or even arrogant. They are often mistaken to be a shy person in the presence of a crowd. This way of thinking is wrong. Being an introvert or an extrovert is not a choice we make growing up, it is something we are born with or something we become due to various circumstances.
Introverts need some time for themselves to recharge while extroverts can recharge at a party. Being an extrovert or an introvert does not make a person good or bad. It’s all normal. Indians are mostly extroverts. With our big fat Indian weddings and joint families, people tend to not understand why a person would want be in their room alone when there are people to talk to.
Parents with and introverted and an extroverted kids tend to assume that the one who is all alone reading a book or listening to music, isn’t socializing enough as the other who is so much more outgoing. The newer generations are seeing so many introverts compared to the older ones. That is why extroverts perfectly fit into our society.
It’s not necessary that a kid who is not talking much is shy. Introverts are not shy. They are just ‘a fish out of water’. In fact there are quite a few extroverts who are shy too! So being shy is not necessarily an introverted trait. Similarly if a person is anti-social, it does not mean that they are an introvert. It just means that they do not have any interest in daily drama and gossip.
It is assumed that introverts are not fun to hang out with. But that is surely not the case. Introverts tend to show their ‘fun side’ when in a small group of friends. They find it an unnecessary to exert themselves too much in a big crowd. That is why they get away unnoticed.
There is a similar case with having both introverts and extroverts in a classroom. Teachers need to understand that just because a student does not answer or does not do well in a class presentation does not mean that they don’t know what is going on or that they don’t study. And similar is the condition for every introvert in India.
Introverts and extroverts have different tendencies. They have different habits. It does not mean that any one is less than the other.
[Written by Sara Jain]
