Opinion | Columnists
Taking the words out of one's mouth
The skill of countering a statement with an eloquent, witty rejoinder appears to be headed the way of the dodo. In those not-so-distant times gone by, people refused to be overawed.
- By Kevin Martin, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 00:09 May 8, 2008
The skill of countering a statement with an eloquent, witty rejoinder appears to be headed the way of the dodo.
In those not-so-distant times gone by, people refused to be overawed. Giving as good as one got used to be a dazzling exercise in silver-tongued fencing.
Thrust and parry, riposte and repartee. Touche, counter-touche. Alas, more and more these days, one is witness to the placid, passive verbal back-off.
Increasingly, one hears people quip, simply and unashamedly, "I don't know what to say. I'm just speechless."
Sportsmen and Hollywood celebrities, who were among the early conceptualists of this art of keeping the stiff upper lip well buttoned, have now passed it on to the general public - much like generous disbursements of free downloads - until every alternate person in the street is now in possession of this pirated dumbing down software and can be heard mumbling, at odd intervals, to the occasional query: "I don't know what to say. I'm totally speechless."
A universal silence, it would seem, is just around two more corners. But then, I'm hardly the person to be sitting in judgment.
Truth be told, I would be the last to be elected to such a panel of judges, seeing how I wear my reticence in public like a proud badge. But I'm not really a silent type, as good friends will vouch.
Like other fellow-reticents I just need to get the feel of that initial "roll", then I'm off and, on a few occasions, have experienced that unstoppable forward thrust a juggernaut carries, phrases and sentences blurring blindingly into each other with lightning ferociousness as the ground covered by a conversation got chewed up and spit out.
To put things even straighter, I don't think I have ever retreated willingly into the harbouring arms of speechlessness and claimed to be word-challenged.
I will admit, however, to taking my time with a reply. My editor on one occasion thought I had run out of defence and put the phone down on me even as I was marshalling my argument.
But I will confess openly to experiencing two such moments when my tongue couldn't have been more thoroughly knotted.
The first occurred in the eighties, in my incarnation as a teacher in a wonderfully aesthetic boarding school in Darjeeling where, on a good day, you woke up with Mount Kanchenjunga beaming whitely and proximately, and you went to bed with the same majesty watching over you.
Peremptory tap
My first years there were spent teaching mischievous, riotous lots of 12-year-olds, 95 per cent of them boarders. One soporific afternoon, during a rather dull history lesson, a peremptory tap was heard on the classroom door and I, my mind still on Simon Bolivar, turned the knob and opened it a crack only to find a stalwart of a woman on the other side, saying to me, "Mujhe chand chahiye".
My tongue went into tangle mode right then and it took an astute young pupil to figure out she was at the wrong classroom door, in search of her moon-surnamed nephew.
The only other occasion was about two years ago, here in Sydney at a party where nearly all those in attendance didn't know all the others, or so it seemed.
Still, one must socialise, mingle, even if you're the odd fish out and aren't smoking on the porch outside, or holding a tall glass.
Somehow, I found myself in the company of a flamboyant individual who could have been a Johnny Depp pirate type, bandana, earrings and, if you looked closely, make-up.
My friend Ryan was there, too, but I was the one being addressed. "Would you like a poof, mate? You look like you could do with one."
That, I swear, is what I heard. Ryan, after we'd retreated tactfully, assured me the jolly guy, with roots in Yorkshire, was offering me a cigarette. Then, and only then, did I once again feel the salivary onrush of bottled words.
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
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