Everyone has their secret fears, dreads, and bugbears. And their paranoid behaviour always has some magnificent name like omphalophobia or nomophobia. Me? I suffer from something so exquisitely exotic that medical science has collectively given up and I have had to do what any self-respecting neurotic would do: invent my own Latin-sounding names for my disorder. My pathological dread of small talk is now called blathablustaphobia! And in the aggravated form, it is termed prattledamnicosis!
I have suffered blathablustaphobia since prep school. My fear of small talk usually gives rise to a queasy feeling but when placed in circumstances where I perceive no escape, I develop acute prattledamnicosis—which almost chokes me.
There are many situations in which my escape routes are cut off. Living in a high rise, I am terrified about being trapped in the lift with anyone, especially a PPP—a persistent, petty prattler. These are the pestilences who have a frantic compulsion to chat. I always step cautiously into a lift, lest there be some PPP lying in wait inside. I gingerly enter. The doors close. Breathing too loudly feels like a sin. Then I relax, because there is no one else in the lift. But the relief is short lived. Another resident enters the lift on the very next floor.
“Going up, are we?” he asks cheerily, as if the lift could go sideways, too. In response to such asinine observations, I have taken to whispering in a conspiratorial manner: “No, I am taking this lift to Connaught Place. But don’t tell anyone, otherwise people will stop using the Metro.”
Illustration: Job P.K.
That reply leaves the chatty blighter totally confused and he spends the rest of the ride trying to decide whether I am joking or if he should alert security.
Trains are awful, because they are the favourite breeding grounds for PPPs. Whenever I must travel by train, I make sure I have a book to read. Almost certainly, some old fogey in the opposite berth will start my cross-examination: “Name? Caste? Ancestral village? Salary? Wife’s job? Designation?” It is then that I open my book and bury my nose in it. If the interrogator persists, I adopt that old Baba Ramdev gambit—the Bhramari Pranayama. I hum so loudly that the bumblebee buzz drowns out all sounds; even the clickity click of the wheels. It also unnerves the old fogey, who wisely decides to not provoke an obvious looney.
The deadliest traps of all are aeroplanes, where I am literally strapped down for the small-talk brutalisation. When I am lucky, the seat next to mine is occupied by some hyperactive little monster who keeps fidgeting, screaming, and throwing up. Otherwise, I get saddled with some chirpy old woman or a talkative uncle ji who wants to know why I am going where and for what purpose. Trapped in my seat, with nowhere to escape, I rely on my constant friends—headphones! They don’t even have to be plugged into anything—I just wear them and point emphatically at my ears whenever the PPP tries to strike up a conversation. It usually works!
Doctors’ waiting rooms should be sacred temples of quiet misery, of silent reflection, dreadful anticipation and earnest prayer. Yet, I invariably run into some nonchalant blighter who treats it as yet another stage for practising his prattling skills. This pest tries his damnedest to scare me to death by sharing his WhatsApp gyan.
And there is invariably another nincompoop, a graduate of the Internet College of Medical Sciences, who wants to play a game called ‘Guess My Disease’. Just last week, while I was waiting to see my doctor about a nagging pain in my ankle, one such medical graduate stared intently at me.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You are here to consult the doctor!”
I nodded noncommittally, though I was sorely tempted to say that I had come to audition for ‘Indian Idol’. I just hoped my silence would defeat his craving for small talk and make him shut up. The internet graduate totally misunderstood my reticence and assumed I was embarrassed because of some unmentionable affliction. He stared at me, as if mentally subjecting me to a total body scan. Then, visibly brightening, he declared, “Aha! You must then be here for treatment of haemorrhoids, right?”
He then launched into a comprehensive narration about his wife’s uncle’s cousin’s son, who had a miraculous recovery from a severe case of an identical condition. The extraordinary result was due to the 5G therapy, consisting of guzzling gallons of goat milk with ginger and garlic. By the time it was my turn to see the doctor, I had quite forgotten what I had come to see him about.
If you too suffer from prattledamnicosis, know you are not alone. Stay strong! Utter not a word! Silence is golden! No power can force you to converse about nothing with people you don’t know, don’t care about, and will probably never meet again. Like me, rebel against expectations of society! Refuse to respond to banal remarks in lifts, in coffee shops, at weddings, and every other situation where silence would be a wonderful alternative. And keep praying that, one day, small talk will be outlawed as a crime against humanity.
K.C. Verma is former chief of R&AW. kcverma345@gmail.com