Tall Errance

This is another pack of people I don’t particularly hate, but they make me very uncomfortable at times.

When some of us are sitting and drinking at the end of a long day, especially when we are drinking lots, some people who never drink just tag along. After the first couple of glasses their presence makes me very uncomfortable. I somehow feel I cannot connect with them any longer, they’ll never understand why I’m blabbering the way I am, or why someone else is not walking straight.

Generally, they don’t even have a humane view of drinkers. They think we’re generally the out-of-control imbecile irresponsible types. They have a very negative view of us and don’t shy away from sharing their views. Usually with the sucker kind of people who never refuse them audience.

If it gets to that, I hate them. Otherwise I’m just uncomfortable.

Research itself is not bad. Research into any field can be a good idea, with the right people to interpret and consume that research. But there is an unending breed of people who believe research to be absolute.

First of all, many kinds of primary research only indicate trends and not definite answers. Just because a research says that 25% of Indians are expressed desire to have sex with a horse, it doesn’t mean that 25% will. The research would have been carried out in a particular context. Either the subjects would have been asked the question directly, or they could have been asked (mis)leading questions from which this is only an inference.

But those who take this kind of research seriously are dumb idiots. In fact, those who report such research with its context stripped off, or with their own interpretations of it should also be stripped off their jobs. The dumb idiots can get all hyper about the findings of the research, evolve their own interpretations and projections from it and then attempt to make the rest of the world hyper along with them. If they fail in creating the hyper situation, they will pick on a few simple suckers and impose the situation upon them. "Do you eat onions? Oh, you can get cancer!" "Do you pee more than 5 times in a day? Poor baby, you must have had a disturbed childhood."

I’ve never tried to stop such ridiculous practices, especially since I can’t think of a way to do so. I just hope these people will perish some day.

For some people, they love attention so much that they make a big issue out of everything, just so everyone around them starts discussing the topic with him or her. If some company in the middle of Nicaragua raised the price of plastic by 1 cent, it affects their lives as much as the death of a loved one. Their eyes open up wide, jaws drop about two inches and there comes the loud, unbelieving gasp — the kind that says, "How could they do this? Don’t they have any concern for humanity? What will happen to this world now?"

Yes, I hate it when this happens. And I hate it even more when people around willingly pitch in. And the effect spreads around the entire room in no time. Before you can blink, everyone has that same aghast look, the bewildered tone of a wronged voice and the skepticism about any good existing in this world.

I agree that no one has ever brought up the plastic industry in Nicaragua, but the ‘issues’ discussed are as disastrous. The person’s neighbour’s cousin’s daughter developing acne problems. Or her kid’s friend playing with an immobile toy airplane. And how sweet they make cake these days. Oh, they can spend hours discussing the number of calories in a single peanut and how many hours they would have to exercise to shed that off, alternatives to exercising and all that jazz.

Usually I try and up and away. When I get stuck, I completely downplay the ‘problem’ (downplay is just relative — I think I actually treat it with just the amount of involvement it requires). That’s when all the stares turn to me and they start thinking that I’m not good for this planet. I’m one of the wrong-doers and I think their glares say that I should be banished. Not allowed to live. Flogged in public.

If that’s how it ends, please do flog me. But end it forever. No more of these kind of discussions, please!

Not very different from the people I described in my earlier post on Preachers, these people are a very creative, inventive and socialising lot. They are generally talkative and can’t stand not making conversation. So once you run out of the standard niceties, you’re stuck.

That’s when they are at their creative best. They’ll take one long hard stare at you and immediately come up with a list of imaginary flaws that you have. They know you don’t have them, or at least you or anyone else is not bound to suffer because of them in a long time to come. But it makes conversation. If you last two or three sentences, you’re done for. That’s about the time they start believing whatever they’ve just said to be true.

The best defence you have is to agree with them. Make up some way in which you are going to improve yourself. The more you try to counter them or argue about the baselessness of the conversation, the more they will try to convince you and will end up convincing themselves more. If before the end of the dialogue they are completely convinced, your life could turn into hell. They’ll make sure you spend the next few weeks, months or years trying to fix something you didn’t have in the first place.

As a very vague analogy, assume you and your friend are standing in front of a bullock cart. You have just told him that you’re going to travel to Scotland on that bullock cart and have run out of conversation. Now imagine him sizing you up, the environment and one deep breath later saying, "You should get the engine on that bullock cart checked. It’s a long trip and you don’t want to get out and push it in case something goes wrong." That’s very helpful advice, except, you argue, "The bullock cart doesn’t have an engine." Imaging the agony you’ve just put him through because you stood up to argument. You should have asked him for directions to the nearest service station to get the engine checked, instead you countered his very statement. Add a petrified look to our conversationalist, "It doesn’t even have an engine? This is way too unsafe. You’re not going to Scotland on that. What you need to do is save up huge loads of money for the next three years, buy a good brand of a horse carriage and only then make this trip."

Of course, most such conversations I encounter are at a far more personal level, usually some aspect of my personality. And you’ll have to trust me when I say that it’s not my ego which prevents me from taking ‘feedback’ from my friends. Their pointers really are meaningless. These are the kind of people I’m stuck with.