To speak or not to speak

Take any random set of friends of mine, and ask them about me. They might give you varied responses. But you are almost are sure to get one response from all of them, that I have absolutely unbelievable capacity to speak utterly confusing but still somehow strangely coherent philosophical blabber.

For me, it is a pleasure to engage in a discussion, more so if it is getting more of a discourse where only I speak and the other guy listens. And I’m almost oblivious to the fact that the state of mind of the guy in front might be anything between blissful, perplexed, disgusted or I-would-kill-you-if-its-not-illegal.

But strangely so, this trait has been handy, very very handy. I met a couple of guys (absolute strangers) a few days back. They were sitting a few places from me in a restaurant, and seemed to be having an intense discussion about some very personal stuff. So much personal that, the decibel levels of their voice discussing that stuff in public, was enough to indicate that they were surely drunk. One of them had a beard and had pretty long hair; the other one was wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt. I had enough reasons to say a “hi”. And I did. And found out that one of them was an automobile engineer turned journalist turned PR guy, the other was a dropout geek attuned to rolling out code faster than speech. We struck a conversation, a conversation which lasted eight hours.

Not so strangely, I did like the guys. There was a sort of candidness in the talk, because there was nothing to lose, no hesitation in abusing the other, no thoughts of how the guy might feel, no chance of we meeting again. And that, actually changed the way I converse. I was actually listening to them.

20. February 2008 by Nikhilesh Ghushe
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