There is ONE thing I have not been able to fix for a long time.

I have too big a mouth and I have known it over a decade that it needs curbing.

Sometimes I try to rationalize: at home I don’t speak at all and when I do it only rains abuses. There have been weeks and months when I have not opened my vocal chords at all – graveyard silence.

I am not at all noisy in my writings and I am able to place the right emotion and context without wasting too much of fanfare or a laboured effort. My writing has also matured to the extent that it need not reflect my views as I am commercial writer now. Write to serve the cause and there is no heroism or glory in the process or thereafter. It brings food to the table and thank god; nothing more to it.

But when it comes to verbal communication, it is as if I am dying to heard and in a dying hurry too. I hate myself but sometimes I don’t hear my voice at all since there is total silence here and it is then that I do some chanting of Gita or Rudram to see whether those still function with control.

In addition, for me speaking is an act of rhythm and so once into it, I never stop!!! I am prone to accent and pronunciation errors – my sisters would ridicule me on them in my growing years – and when I am nervous speaking before a crowd even my English deserts me.

So, I keep working this steam (that damn rhythm) and keep the throat muscles exercised.

Talking too much and out of turn is verbal indiscipline and I need to do something on it.

I asked my friend Ranga and as usual benefited:

His thoughts were to get into touch one’s centre of reference. Be in touch with your own mind. Don’t try to impose your ideas, thoughts, emotion on the poor, hapless people in front of your verbal fire. Don’t bite your tongue waiting for the other bloke to finish his speech and then you can jump on make your opinions known: all conversations are opinions waiting-in-queue to be heard and that is not communication at all.

Sathya, just take a backseat. Hear the traffic going below (I stay in a noisy street) and hear the crows sometimes even as others are in their full flow. Decipher their opinions and emotions and you are not expected to attend to them or dress up their agonies at all. Just hear, that’s it and if that becomes taxing then indicate your displeasure politely.

The best was: Sathya, have you noticed when one talks 3 sentences, three different people may take off on three different directions. That’s how unpredictable the course of a conversation.
That is why, smart people don’t talk much at all.

Contrast it when two people are cued in, then there is no need for lengthy explanations or background notes. It should be brief and of of utility. The test of a good communicator can only be this: is it relevant to the other person? Is it honest? Is it kind and sweet? Beyond these there cannot be any other.

I need to overcome this “talking disease” and I must.

Watch myself, concentrate on my mind, and I don’t need to prescribe my remedy on others or burden them with my opinions. I know that talking is only form of self expression for most and that’s why the overflow. As long as my sanity is not affected, let them dump their feelings and emotions and I must have the maturity not to react.

As for friends, words are not required at all.

Rajnikant in one of movies drops a pearl,” Wise people will understand without being told and stupid ones will never no matter how many times you tell them. Then why bother with talking?”

I must meditate on these thoughts and must improve on this score