(I’m gonna have to make a short story long - what else do you think is a better use of time on a friday afternoon, huh?)
Last year, I went to this Christmas party arranged by my company. I met few desi people there whom I knew from my workplace. We started chit chatting a bit when another coleague (whom I was meeting for the first time) showed up with his wife. One of the guys I was hanging out with knew the guy so they stopped and greeted eachother. My friend then introduced rest of the people standing there and we had an exchange of ‘hi, hello’.
Immediately after the exchange there was a heavy silence. Few looked down on their shoes, deep in thoughts, few looked down on others’ shoes, deep in thoughts, while the rest looked around aimlessly at no points of particular interest, like a rooster who had just been on a binge of food, sex, and food and now stands aloof (or ‘sulking’ as Anchal would put it) with a slanted gaze at the meeting point of the horizontal and vertical axis in the air (having finally known the universally perplexing question of ‘who came first’). A few moments later, when everybody made sure that the silence had reached its vertex of having a needle dropped and heard adequately, the arriving guy said ‘Ok, so I will see you later’ in a confirmation-seeking sorta way and after receiving the expected response, quickly moved forward towards another circle of coleagues and had a repeat performance of engaging everybody in a deep, thought-provoking silence while looking at shoes or acting like a rooster.
Few minutes later, another couple arrived. Having been more experienced this time around, I tried to break the barriers of tradition (acting on my impulses of being what Xtreme would call ‘rebel without a clue’) and uttered few words, only to mismanage the whole thing. I first complimented the wife on what a nice dress she was wearing and whinned to the husband on how cold it was. This had a rather strange reaction on both of them. I don’t remember exactly but may be I mixed up adjectives and called it ‘nice weather and cold dress’ but still I don’t think I deserved the looks I got from the wife and the husband. I almost prayed to God not to have the opportunity in any, near or remote, future to work with the husband on a project or I had my career with the company in severe danger. The particular couple moved forward briskly with fewer words of farewell than the first one.
With my luck, we had a third couple arriving shortly after. I quickly re-evaluated my options. I could keep quiet. I could keep quiet and act like a rooster (as I already knew the kind, size, and color of everybody’s shoes by then), or I could compliment the guy on his dress and whinned about the weather to the wife. I didn’t get enough time to re-examine my options. The couple arrived, was greeted accordingly, and next thing I knew both my friend who introduced us and the husband were chit chatting like langotiyays and eventually everybody participated in shooting the breeze. Apparently, they knew eachother better than the first two couples.
Later on I wondered, how hard it was? I mean, there are great topics like weather to be explored in details every time you meet a new person but then why people just keep quiet even if they don’t know eachother that well? They fall into this huge, awkward silence and make everybody else feel awkward too.
Mostly, I have noticed that even if desi people participate in such a small talk, it revolves around the worklife. Things about projects, deadlines, locations blah blah blah. There is not much social desi stuff out there that desi people talk about, or is there? If not weather, you can always talk on Politics. From my observations, you can never say enough on Kashmir, for example… or Palestine if you’re in the company of Pakistanis alone. And trust you me, there is not a greater topic in the world than religion itself. What else do you think desis can talk about?