Saturday, October 28, 2006

3rd Party


Let's say,  we are in a gathering. Some topic comes up. Someone picks it up and starts off talking about it like an authority. For a few minutes, we think he may be a real authority. But, very soon, if we know something about the topic, we start recognizing a few deviations from facts and sometimes truth stretched way too far. We also notice that there are others also who are feeling the same way. No one saying anything to counter him or her for either sounding rude or being snubbed off or some other kind of harsh treatment. People who are overconfident, careless, insensitive, spotlight-hungry are routinely seen talking about subjects which they know little or nothing about. So, how do we deal with that without being put up with the crap they are dumping on us and other sensible folks in the gathering.


There are a few ways. Easiest is to  walk away and be done with it. You can do that if you are the only person there and if you leave, this person automatically stops his/her dumping. In such a case, do not even waste your breath, just leave with little wastage of your energy. Those kind of people do not deserve your time or effort to refute. They are not willing to correct themselves in any case.


However, if you are in a gathering of many nice people, by leaving, you will lose out on the fun which you can have with those nice people. That may have been the only reason you came in the first place and this person has taken the assembly hostage by his non stop blabber on something.


You very well know that if you refute what he is saying directly, using his sharp tongue, he is going to insult your or make some corny remarks. So, you bring a fictitious third party to fight on your behalf. You would start off saying - "you know, if someone objects to what you are saying with these facts, how do you respond?". Most of the people who are talking about something they do not know fall for this trap and waste their breath, they blow hot and cold over the fictitious person you have introduced and take their ire against them. Moreover, another thing is they get frustrated too as they can not lynch this fictitious person who has challenged them. Now they are focused on attacking the fictitious person that talking crap about some nice subject on which some other knowledgeable person would have spoken. Now they start talking to you privately berating the fictitious person that you brought up. They will be speaking like "who is the person who asks such a question? Do you know him? I must know because I want to have a good argument with him and show him his place," and so on. This is your opportunity to let this person get off the high way, ease into exit and move on. Good riddance.


Once I had run into a relative who started off on something and ended explaining how his acidity problem went away when the ceiling fan fell on him and grievously injured him. Despite keeping as open mind as possible, I could not stretch my imagination to this level. There was no way to deal with this person with any fictitious person or anything. It was amazing that this person was making stronger and stronger case for  disappearance of acidity due the fall of the fan with all bogus medical reasons. Thankfully there was no doctor over there. I enjoyed his bogus medical theory for a while and said I had to take a nap. That was the end of it. Gosh, I still can not believe someone can make up such a story just defend something that they told which was untrue in the first place.


Another incident was equally funny. There was this guy whose cousin was like God. I am pretty sure this cousin  was a fictitious character this guy was using to display his knowledge of everything on the earth. You talk about Wimbledon, he would say his cousin was there in the last Wibledonr. That's it. He would start one lie after another and you should not be surprised if he ends up saying his cousin had tea with the queen of England at the end of Wimbledon. The original point was lost and the nice discussion  you could have had was lost with his cousin's visit to the Wimbledon. Next time you say something else on cricket. He would again begin his cousin's experience with cricket match which may end he having played with one or the other cricketer during his college days. So on. If you challenge him how can his same cousin have all these experiences, he would become defensive and say these are all different cousins. This way he would have needed the entire humanity to be his cousin.


Once we made  'bakra' (fool) out of him and had a lot of fun behind his back. I am sure he does not know about this even now. In order to lure him into the trap, one person in our group started talking about a garment which had the brand name of Galaxy. We were not sure that this person would walk into our trap that easily because Galaxy was a very heavily advertised brand and most of us adolescents were curious about this garment than any other garment at that time. That's it. As soon as he heard Galaxy and somehow made connection that this was garment, he started telling about his cousin and making up all stuff about that. Such as his cousin buying that exclusive brand in London and bringing it in dozens, customs catching and what no. We were all trying hard to hold back our laughter. Ultimately when he finished his cousins triumph with galaxy we all had a hearty laugh. When he inquired we told him that we found his cousin doing all that to get galaxy so funny and brave. In truth, galaxy was a brand name for most commonly available brassier. This person who always had only male cousins had not even bothered but had gone on to make a lot of stories about a male cousin buying expensive galaxy branded outfit from London and bringing all that to India facing enormous problem with customs. :)







Cheers!




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