To speak or not to speak

Know when to talk, what to talk and when to shut up 

Indian television and its devoted news watchers lost their glamour fix recently when Shashi Tharoor was summarily dismissed off air by his bosses for having been more articulate than he was supposed to be.

I suspect that it was having nothing substantial to speak about his own party that probably drove the natural orator in him to speak of those he was supposed to denounce, in almost glowing terms, thus getting condemned and cut off in turn. Apparently, it was his unrestrained eloquence that did him in. People like him, who speak with such ease and flourish, are hard to put down, but when they get their foot in their mouth, it makes one wonder how much of speech is desirable and how much of silence is appropriate.

I have always held men who engage in ceaseless spiel in equal awe as those who consider spilling words an anathema. I have respect for both, for they are equally exceptional in their character.  However, both categories are generally avoided by people, for the former makes one’s head swim and the latter leaves them high and dry.

A man that we know suffers from acute verbal diarrhoea, a la Arnab Goswami. It is as if words were bursting at his mouth waiting to be retched on someone. For all the disparaging expressions I am using, I must admit that he is a great entertainer. His ability to crack us up with his inanities often eclipses his overzealous verbosity, yet we give him the slip as much as possible, and we must blame only our lack of good humour for this abject behaviour.

It is perhaps a symptom of our own inherent eagerness to speak more and listen less that makes us shun the compulsive conversationalist, often blinding us to their remarkably open nature. Men who speak with no restraint are men with a candid camera turned toward their chest. They don’t build bunds around their thoughts because they are flowing streams of consciousness. That we judge them by our angled vision and narrow terms, and tick them off as tiresome is our failing, not theirs.

On the other side is the sea of silence, the face of impenetrable reticence that creates insufferable moments of awkwardness when in company! They are a species that I hold in greater awe, for the intrigues of the unknown are more fascinating than the charms of the obvious. The cloistered beauty of silence stuns at times, leaving our imagination reeling, making us wonder about what secret thoughts lay in the depths of their heart. It keeps us guessing, many times driving us to erroneous conclusions; it teases us, and challenges us to unravel its hushed quality. It makes us wonder if their silence is a façade or a sign of insensitivity. Ask them and they would aver that it is a natural tendency, which does them no favour whatsoever, like in the instance of our former Prime Minister.

There is no doubting that being short on words is a fine virtue by itself — it settles issues, averts controversy and allows for contemplation. That we find this hermit like quality somewhat intimidating and tedious is a result of our diffident and circumspect nature, than of any deliberate intent.

Hitched for life to someone who uses measured speech and vital silence extensively, my initial years of marriage were replete with meaningless monologues. Given to natural garrulousness, it was hard for me to practise silence, and for him to counter it verbally. We, however, didn’t change our ways, nor did we alter each other. Somewhere along the way, we accepted our difference and exchanged our traits in small quantities that added words to his quietness and sobriety to my talking.

Years on, I still can’t figure out where the line separating speech and silence lies, and how much of the two to exercise. It’s perhaps this ignorance that cost Tharoor too his job. –Asha Iyer Kumar 

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