BEWARE OF CHATTERERS

Do you think the dictionary meaning of socialization pertains to, what actually is exhibited around us? Doesn’t socialization entail, sitting together and having a healthy exchange of views amongst members of a social group? Or is it mindless babbling, or competing for one-upmanship? In this regard there is always a shocker ready to unzip these days.

One day, while in the throes of a ruminating session on a few existential matters, sitting in the lawn of my second ‘home’ in the hills, I was joined by two matriarchs who came strutting noisily. They belong to the community and like us, move temporarily to hills in summers to escape the scorching sun of plains. Whenever in their company, I fail to avoid annoying consciousness of their self congratulatory attitude. Don’t they have any inkling of this, I always wonder. One of them flaunts an inflated image of herself, blowing her own trumpet about her spacious bungalows and wealth (though her husband started life at a low level) to the muted chagrin, supposedly, of almost all her listeners. However, the other lady outsmarts her in garrulity more often. The poor gentle soul, who gets trapped solo in their verbal manacles, ends up bewildered and bemused.

After ensconcing themselves in their chairs, without any preliminaries, they start articulating their stream of inanities nonstop. They even refuse a customary necessity of a smile or a nod from anyone, lest somebody usurps the space. So much so, when one of them stops momentarily for a breather the other immediately grabs the space. It is like constant cacophonic hammering on temples which long hopelessly for an escape from the vocal mauling. Always their compulsive verbosity makes one feel like an inanimate mass. But there is no stopping their harangue. In fact, the act of listening to them, is as repulsive as a taboo.

Their blah blah ranges from the likes and dislikes of their husbands and their grandchildren, to pet dogs and their fussy eating habits, to pet bunnies with their ubiquitous burrows and unending litters, to pet parrots and other canary birds. The chattering also covers kitchen gardens and the upkeep of sprawling lawns in their first homes, birth and wedding anniversaries of their kith and kin and a lot more. They vie with each other to steal space by raising voice decibel to drown each other’s voice. Why do they go on and on unveiling the details of their private lives, which smack of deeply rooted hypocrisy is inexplicable? May be it is their way of shrouding the reality of their complexes beneath their personas.

I have encountered such annoyances in the course of my life but what perplexes me is the dumbness of these people who continue to exploit your good manners without realizing, why other people should take to their prosaic lives?

Apparently, such people close their thinking minds to believe that they impress their listeners. It never shows on the radar of their minds that their listeners form a poor opinion of them and would turn their back on seeing them approaching. Their disgusting monologues leave none any wiser for that.

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