On social etiquettes

…contd….

 “Well, you said wishing good morning is just a phony formality. 

"Why do you say so?” I asked.

“Oh that” he replied “Because it is so!”.

“What? How?” I asked surprised.

“When we meet, we want to break an ice or start a conversation and then such phrases come handy. We say “good morning”, ‘how are you?’, ‘all good?’, ‘Oh! God! It’s so hot today?’ etc. we don’t mean any of these. Infact we are not even interested in the answers! And surprisingly the answers are also standard ones like, ‘goodmorning’, ‘I am fine’, yes, it’s so hot, can’t imagine how it would be in May’.

I have never understood why people involve in these small talk which is mundane routine and yet so meaningless. It irritates me to be so phony. So I never ask such stupid questions and neither do I answer such questions” he said.

“But that would be considered very rude. How do you deal with that?” I asked.

“I don’t deal with it. I just don’t give it a thought. If phony is your idea of being ‘good and well mannered then I am sorry I am not one’ and if you can accept me this way, fine otherwise good-bye!” said Prakash.

I didn’t sense any sense of anger, resentment, frustration or arrogance. He was saying all this so casually. He knew what he wanted, what he believed in and lived it his way. As simple as that! 

Now I found this talk was getting differently interesting! 

“Then why is it a social norm? So many people practicing it can’t be wrong! Think about it. Are all these people stupid enough to say ‘these accepted formal greetings’ robotically? There actually should be something that you are missing.” I said.

He had a hearty laugh. Prakash was one such person – one who had great sense of humour and one who found lots of things that amused him. His laugh was good but I actually didn’t understand why he laughed now. I waited for his reply and he gave one right away after having that hearty laugh! “You really think that something that is practiced by many is the ‘right one’. Don’t you? I don’t blame you for that. But remember this always, crowd doesn’t necessarily mean ‘correct’. In fact, most of the time it is wrong!”

...contd.....