I'm so bloody pissed. This might turn out to be a terrible idea and I might repent doing this later but I feel emotionally driven enough right now to park my modesty, both real and feigned, and go on a full blown rant in the hope that it might strike a chord with few folks somewhere, and something will be done about it. Why are so many people so un-fuckin'-curious?
I was talking to Deekshith a few months ago and he said, "You know when Swati and I go to parties, we make an effort to know more about people, ask questions, build conversations. It is hardly ever reciprocated dude. Why doesn't anyone want to know anything about us?". And I went holy fuck bro, I totally totally get you. Because what led him to that place wasn't a sense of entitlement or self-obsession. Because I had asked myself that same question many times and while there is a sense of insult when you question the other person for hours and they don't ask one question in return about you, that is only one small part of the equation. The surprise at the act not being reciprocated actually comes towards the later stages when it actually feels more awkward at not having to answer despite harranguing the other person for so long. It might not even be just one conversation, maybe you've spent weeks and months without them seeking to know your opinions, justifications, influences, reasons. The act of answering is a chance to self-mythologise but also at a more moderate level, it is a chance for you to narrativise your own life. Until people ask certain questions, we sometimes ourselves don't notice or know why we acted in certain ways. So another person's lack of interest deprives us of the opportunity to build those narratives. All this, though, is still the self-absorbed part. What about your desire to know? Is there nothing in the other person that prompts a question, wonderment; Atleast an explanation?
A couple of years ago, Sravani and I met a person who was marrying into the family. It was our first meeting and we spent the entire day asking her about herself, her family, her interests, her opinions, her motivations, and on our return Sravani and I were surprised to realise that she hadn't asked one thing about us. Not one. And while I probably remember that incident for its extremety, it is very often that I meet people who have nothing to ask. Not just about me, but about anything. They have strong views, judgements, pontifications, complaints, fucking pravachans, anything but questions. I just realised that that's what I do on this blog but that's perhaps because no one asks me questions that would prompt these thoughts, so I come to this tiny corner of the internet and speak into the void.
A small voice is starting to creep up that's telling me that I have it wrong, that I'm missing something, that people are different and I'm missing on recognising their amazing qualities by obsessing over one that I have. Yet I know it would be disingenous of me to leave it at that. I have given the benefit of doubt, I have really tried to understand in all the ways my limited self would allow, I have even tried to push myself in conversations in the hope of prodding them to build on that. It almost always ends in failure. Again, the personal insult is only one thing. The dismay is at the conversations that could have been, the spaces of thought they would have opened up, the strength that relationship would've developed. Why the indifference, why the lack of enthusiasm? Forget me, maybe its my personal failings, my uninterestingness so void-like, my inability to catch attention so profound that so many people are put off at the prospect of engaging with me. Do other people pique their curiosity, does atleast one person make them want to know more about the world via themselves?
I haven't seen the film but there's a scene in Mike Leigh's Naked where when asked if he's bored, the David Thewlis character goes on a diatribe. I'll be honest and admit that I've spent many ocassions identifying with the character and looking at many people I see with smug condescension. But now for the first time I sense the man's loneliness. Ashok Gorrepati's friend Sowmya Sen (Deekshith, remember how much we tripped on "Feels like Garden State, man"?) once wrote a prose poem about a young idealistic teacher who comes to a village to teach but after a year when a strong incident shows him the futility of his actions, lights a cigarette, sets all his books on fire, and walks away. I saw a certain kind of romance in that, even defiance, infact I would've probably argued that the true story was the teacher's transformation not the villagers', now I see the despondence. How lonely it must've felt to walk in with a head full of stories, loving collected and caressed, motivated by a sense of duty, the love, the excitement, the joy to share, only to realise after repeated trials that there was no audience, that there would be no audience, that nobody cares, that people are content in their worlds, with their narratives, their minds enveloped in snug blankets of worldviews and reasons they've been handed down to protect from the harsh, cold winds of the wider world, that while you may think you are on a great mission, you are not required, even detested for being the purveyor of unexpected, unfathomable, thereby uncomfortable, questions that only prompt further questions?
I know I'm painting a rather self-flatteringly romantic picture of an enlightened individual against the unwashed masses, and thank goodness I don't feel like that genuinely, but it does make me feel sad and lonely sometimes. There are only two things to do: one, to keep questioning people and making peace with the fact that they might never reciprocate it, and two, to seek people who are more curious than me, more driven, more patient, more awed by the world, more intellectually driven, more artistically and spiritually open, more englightened, modest, graceful, some of whom I've had the absolute privilege and fortune of meeting, who I hope to learn from, emulate, seek reassurances from, scrub a little of my arrogance and ignorance against, and who are spread across time and space in books, films, music, art, podcasts, lectures, and as people. Ah you people, with who so many of my most memorable and transformative conversations have happened, thank you, I love you.
