New Delhi, Dec. 2 -- On most evenings, when he shuts the door of his Bengaluru apartment behind him, public relations consultant Nitin Narain enters a world many people today find unbearable: silence. There is no podcast filling the room, no Netflix hum, no reflexive scroll to drown out the day. "Even when the television is on, the volume is usually off," he says. "There's something incredibly calming about a quiet room-it gives me the space to hear myself think. Silence doesn't feel empty. It feels like peace quietly wrapping itself around me."

Narain has lived alone for a decade and calls solitude his "meaningful ritual". Mornings are for easing gently into the day; evenings are for unwinding and releasing the weight of people, meeting...