Speaking of talking……..

Currently, I am not able to speak---my voice is not working due to a very bad throat. Even otherwise, at my stage in life, it is one’s wife who does all the ‘talkin. Some husbands, of course, claim that this has happened to them right from marriage. For some other couples, an ongoing quarrel exists as to who does not allow the other to speak and, in the process; both manage to speak a lot. What these couples forget is, later if their grown-up and married children are staying with them (or vice versa), it is the children who do all the ‘talkin and the issue of the old fogies talking is treated in the same manner that Bush is currently treating the issues raised by people who are opposed to his invading Iraq. And what all these people do not know is that, as soon as the grandchildren start talking, as my granddaughter has now started, only that voice prevails in the house and is listened with respect. This is the sweetest slavery and voluntary abjuration of the right of free speech that mankind has experienced and no one has been known to have a protest against this. Indeed, people crave for this voice, and even if it is just babble, it is subjected to fond interpretations, each one of which sends parents and grandparents in raptures. Once this voice starts, all other ‘talkin in the house comes to stop, and everyone listens intently. Not one person then asks the source from which the babbling emanates to “pipe down, will you?”

Then, much later, comes the next stage. Adolescent children seek to dominate their parents, but this time, the ‘talkin gets challenged by the parents. Now another delectable phenomenon takes place: When their voices are sought to be muzzled by the parents, these adolescent children sometimes find ready listeners in their old grandparents who seem to have all the time and the patience. This is particularly true about the communication that seems to exist between a granddaughter and the grandmother. For example, a grandmother is sometimes more privy to the current status of an intimate relationship which is developing between her adolescent granddaughter and a young man. Remarkably, the lady-in-love finds her grandmother more understanding than her parents.

No wonder, because parents are sometimes known to give insensitive responses to their daughters’ sincere concerns. This is what happened when an adolescent girl went on chattering with her boy friend in the family drawing room until late in the night. In the morning when she coyly asked her parents at the breakfast table, “daddy, daddy, did our talk disturb you?” the father gravely replied, “no dear, but the intervening periods of silence did!”

S.M.Singru