The Ways of a Conversation
A conversation is merely two-way talking. But it doesn’t end there. It is also an art. A strategy, and a leadership quality. Unsurprisingly, all flirtatious folks excel in conversations. There is a visible power in talking smoothly. Conversations shape several careers — ethical or otherwise. These include spirituality, politics, user research, journalism and many others. All of them rely on the not-so-easy task of building rapport with people.
In fact, the better half of any good TV interview is spent setting the mood. This mood must be carefully choreographed to permit uncomfortable questions. In my observation, a good interview is certainly staged, but not excessively. It has the right sync of direction and flow. Direction is an agenda or a predefined range of topics. Having a rigid agenda takes things downhill. It can turn a conversation into a criminal investigation, or worse — a Shakespearean monologue from that boring play in school textbooks. Unless you are the double incarnation of Sherlock Holmes and Mark Anthony, neither outcome is particularly desirable. Direction is important, but only in small to moderate proportions.
The other half of a good interview is flow. It is the opposite of direction. Flow is to have no agenda, and lets topics come as they please. Lata Mangeshkar’s classic Ajeeb Dasta hai yeh come closes in describing flow :
Ajeeb dasta hai yeh
Kahan shuru, kahan khatam
Yeh manzile hai kaunsi
Na who samajh sake na humThis is a strange story
It has no beginning or end
Or any clue how to proceed
I don’t know, and neither does the other person
Recently, I organised a conversation with an old friend of mine. I say organised because the conversation demanded considerable planning efforts. We lived in different time zones. And more importantly, we hadn’t spoken for about 2 years. Zoom zoom, we got on a call. I had things to share. My friend had things to share. In other words, we both had a vaguely defined list of stuff to share. But hey, this was not a corporate meeting! We were open to letting the conversation go loose. From the looks of it, our conversation was TV interview material — a balance of direction and flow. Except it wasn’t.
There was a third being lurking in our room— an elephant. We both could feel it. The elephant trumpeted in silence. The elephant was awkwardness. And it refused to budge.
We decided to move to a different topic. A special topic. The weather. There is a beauty to weather. It can be discussed with anyone, regardless of your intimacy with them. It was hot on my side of the world and chilly at my friend’s end. Yet it was awkward all around.
It wasn’t that we didn’t want a conversation. It was that conversation didn’t want us.
There is a charm in the daily humdrum of life. I know. I treat myself to a slice-of-life film every now and then. But even monotonous life stories couldn’t salvage our severely awkward conversation. Perhaps we outgrew each other. We tried. We tried hard. But we just couldn’t click as comfortably as we’d have liked to.
At this juncture, I recall a review of the book Morality for Beautiful girls by Alexander McCall Smith . It read “this book is like talking to an old friend”. At that time, talking to an old friend entailed different things. I imagined a pretty picture : the cozy comfort of nostalgia, with a pleasant aura all around. And the book did live up to my mental image. But would talking to an old friend continue to be a pretty picture for me? I suppose not.
