Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Dangling conversation

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high….Where words come out from the depth of truth…

I’m no patriot, thank you. I have a habit of taking words at their face value and making them suit my purpose. These words are just some of them. I’m told I have a tongue sharper than the sharpest knife and a mind so transparent that you can see through it. Hence, I call a spade a spade, a bitch a bitch and an ass an ass, sometimes with a smile on my lips, sometimes gruffly and at other times with a straight face. Hello, I am an extrovert. What did you expect? Some interpret it as tactlessness, others think I’m too brusque while there are still others who think I’m conceited, hence condescending; and my fistful of really close people, don’t think, they know. They know me for what I’m worth, thankfully.

Unfortunately, the number of people I cannot hold in my fist is an overwhelming majority. The miserable sods! More often than not, my humour falls flat on them, they choose to misunderstand me and then fabricate vicious yarns that are delectably pickled as they trickle down from one to another, irrevocably complicating matters. And all this post a personal chat or some such.

But this is the age of virtual communication. And most conversations are happily left dangling. People talk to near, dear and loved ones through Skype, as much as we chat with total strangers, through MSM &Yahoo messengers, over Gtalk or in virtual chatrooms! They, in fact, talk, chat, flirt, even fornicate online these days! (Fuck leaky condoms, someone tell those latex manufacturers, it can't get safer than this!) They have the license to avoid, ignore, scream at, kiss, hug, and even kill:P just by keying in the right words, with little or no emotional scruples whatsoever and no shelf-life. So, if you are mad at someone or totally in awe of another one day, you can kiss and make up or boot the infatuation out the next day. There is hardly anything personal in things virtual. And, the intonation of written words is easy to misinterpret. If the way you talk can stir up a hornet’s nest, imagine the damage that a written word can cause, if misinterpreted.

It’s happened with me. Something written in good humour has been taken to heart and nasty emails have landed in my unsuspecting mailbox, only to screw my Monday morning. It must be my inability to use words correctly, or my vanity. I don’t know, I just say what comes to my mind, you like it or not. I can’t say something and feel/do another. I wasn’t born Janus, so where do I get another face from? Hyprocrisy isn’t a word I take to very kindly. I am what I am. Don’t talk to me if you don’t get my sense of humour, or if you can’t withstand my honesty. The choice is yours, just like I have the right to approve or disapprove with your point of view. So let’s just:

sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference,
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In The Dangling Conversation
And the superficial sighs,
The borders of our lives.

8 comments:

Bonatellis said...

babba ... very sentimental, i see ...

M (tread softly upon) said...

It'll pass. Everything does. Take a walk, clear your mind and forget about it. Or let it pass.

Lalita said...

Ah, the perils of online relationships. Written words, even enhanced with emoticons, don't supply what body language and tones and inflections of voice can. Fact.

Take a deep breath, hon, and shrug it off.

Brazenhead said...

It is OK to dish it out if you can also take it. Very often, people who dish it out freely are the ones that have a tough time taking it.

Rimi said...

However, when a relationship is BOTH online and 'real', oh la la, what a stew! (Excuse the terrible mix there)

I actually, for once, know what you mean. But then perhaps you care too much? I get by my whining to a couple of really good friends in private and maintaining a politely distant exterior in public. Friends, I find, is the keyword. We all get by, you know, with a little help :-)

Priya said...

Bona: Hardly. Just plain angry.
M, Lali: Oh that I already have. Really couldn't take such people too seriously:P They can go hang themselves for all I care.
Brazen head: Bingo. I do have the guts to take it too, provided it's true.
Rimikins: U ebhil debhil;) Friends, or the blog, now the greatest of all friends:P

Junius said...

straight from the heart haa,,,

Möbius said...

sounds like you had a really bad one, huh!
Hope it's gone by now ...