Conversations in life

 “Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.”

― Mark Twain

Lately, life has been a lot about conversations. In the most bizarre ways, life has cornered me to actively try and build these bridges of conversations with new people. And though initially it felt like I was thrown in deep seas with no sense of swimming, I am slowly growing adept to this new change. I've even begun to enjoy it. And so, as always, I am writing to document my learnings and to maybe start a conversation about conversations.

I recently moved to Delhi, for a shorter stint in my training, alongside the rest of my batch of officer trainees. In a strange way, the present setup of us all enjoying the stunner grandiose of 110001, having long walks on roads where the doyens of Indian history walked, has perturbed the usual scenarios. Since Delhi has something to offer to everyone, it has become difficult to catch up, and everyone ends up having multiple plans for a single evening. We all have been juggling with the balance of work, personal life and socialisation, the latter being a forgotten skill after an year long stint in our respective districts. There's an unsaid rush felt in all of us, to make up for the lost time, to rejuvenate friendships marred by the overburdening of adulting, work and expectations.

I, on the other hand, landed in Delhi in search of a change of scene. For the ample chunk of my Assam stay, I learnt to feel deeply content in my own company. And I learnt a very crucial skill- making conversations with everyone. District life in general gave me exposure to talk to the poorest and the richest, the intellectual and the creative, across professions, economic spheres and various other boxes we like to put people in. And with that, I felt like I needed to know more, somehow I felt I knew very little about perspectives and personalities. Why are people the way they are? Why do we act in a certain way and why is communication is a challenge despite long conversations running all across? I just had to figure it out.

I can't say, I now know it all. But I have my two cents to offer now. As a person, I always felt safe in a known bracket of my regular friends, talking over the same issues again, finding comfort in the familiarity of conversations. I think the comfort at some point, started acting like an addictive drug to me, and I started blocking all the new conversations being offered to me. We all end up doing that, and slowly move into the safety net of having a social circle. People keep talking about the core and periphery of social groups, but since we all are ever evolving, isn't this core and periphery supposed to change? Aren't we supposed to grow out of groups and conversations? And if that's the case, how can we expect communication?

In the past one month, I have grown to understand this, I don't want to be shackled again into the bounds of a constant social circle. It is very cozy, but it refutes the sheer purpose of the age I am in. I am supposed to have a world view, and it needs to be based on my choices after hearing all the different versions of people. But if I restrict myself to a few worldly views to start with, I am bound to end up with a parochial sense of understanding. Also, a friend of mine very rightly pointed out, that we are all made of various shades in our personalities. As we get to interact with each other in limited capacities, we pick a shade we identify in someone, and put them in boxes of perceptions. These boxes then become basis of public eye, the way people know you, but it's not necessary that the perception is always correct. Someone with an extremely vibrant external personality can still have a very sensitive inner being. And so it becomes of utmost importance, that we sit back and break down these boxes. We converse to learn to communicate.

In the end, it is all about judging a book by its cover, in a world where covers are being designed to catch attention. All of us are hiding behind our own designed external personalities, and the cover would only stop mattering when we sit down and talk. It is important, conversations are the basis of our entire evolution. It is worth it to take a nose dive into new conversations, into finding new people and communicating honestly. It won't happen in a day, but the covers would slowly start falling. But first, we'd all need to bare ourselves.