Over the years, ChintaMany had learnt two things. One, keeping counsel to himself. Two, never engage in any verbal exchange. These, he had learnt from watching movies and tear-jerking T V dramas. The scripted dialogues of one character are delivered after dutifully hearing out the other character completing its allotted lines. Occasionally, to add life to the dying script commercial breaks are introduced before the other character could respond. In some percentage of the viewers, these intruding commercial breaks became nail-biting suspense to know what the dialogue in reply would be. Not the one to bite off his nails, ChintaMany tooled himself to keep his counsel to himself.
This is not a mastery learnt overnight. During school and college days, he had overheard or eavesdropped snippets of conversational gems venting hard feelings on the third-party recipients. His baptism in silence started when that third party recipient happened to be dear friend or part of the family of elders who had adult- to-adult issues. Though driven by despair, as he could not raise in defence of the dear friend or relative, out of necessity, he learnt to keep silence and his sanity.
While independently developed his secret weapon combining ‘keeping one’s counsel and remaining silent, he might have infringed on the rights of a Nobel Laureate. To avoid being accused of plagiarism, he referenced the inspiring words of Richard Feynman – “There is nothing called absolute silence as you can't stop hearing yourself. The human brain devoid of external sounds to focus on starts to listen to various organs of your body chatting while functioning” This ex post facto, accolade to Richard Feynman settled the issue of the honorarium.
When invaded by conflicting thoughts, ChintaMany used this weapon - talks to himself in silence, not out of shame or fear of being given a berth on a psychiatrist couch. He wouldn't have bothered anyways. What naturally happened within him, stayed right there. He liked to call them as silent conversations and had learnt to listen and live with it, even though they refused to follow a fixed schedule. There in lay a difficulty - sometimes he missed what others wanted to say or said to him.
As time elapsed, ChintaMany found to his amusement and distress, in equal measures, that these nighttime conversations were superior in quality than the daytime batch. Subjects and peoples being the topic, scientists and astronomers shared their workload and were getting free advice from his conversations.
At times, politicians of different hues queued up to entertain him. Sometimes the melodramatic script on politicians’ future, scams dragging the courts inexorably to the demise of the perpetrator, opinions about exit polls by psephologist and amateurs left him in tears. As a comic relief, the TV panel discussions included a new class of entrants - astrologers, tarot card and parrot card readers, as they have also come up with pre-poll predictions and have post-poll predictions on the cards. Not to be left as orphans, the losers train their guns on EVM conspiracy and interfering foreign hands in gloves! ChintaMany wondered whether this grumble should be the trailer or the T V panel discussions?!
His advisories, tears and amusements came at a cost - disturbed sleep. His sleep is left to the mercy of timing and content of that conversation that decides whether the amber/ yellow signal will turn to red or green.
Whom he liked to hear most during these one to ones? Certainly, the scientists and astronomers, as it was an opportunity to recollect or learn things anew. Occasionally, these silent conversations take place in a garden where departed souls of da Vinci, Newton and Einstein hung out and went hammer and tongs arguing ‘who among them should have been rated as the best’. Though he would have preferred to hear Einstein and Neils Bohr going about quantum phenomenon once again. To his dismay neither Einstein nor Neils Bohr showed interest to entangle again! In the midst of all these intellectual bashings, he wondered how he was drawn in that far!
What he would do otherwise? Hear silent talks about or the exit polls along with the usual exit lines - incorrect interpretation of data or voters cleverly feeding false information during survey. On politicians rushing out the bottomless wells of scams to court and court hearing them out post- haste, leaving other non-political litigants cursing themselves for not having added a political angle in their civil suits and so on. Since the matter would be sub judice, he was thankful that the one to ones sympathising with the non-political litigants have remained imprisoned in his mind, without assigning a case number.
To his surprise, once he was hearing a conversation about himself. He had talked to himself to gift some valuables to a relative and to look out with a clinical eye on a relative’s kids who are becoming no good and so on. This his -brain- talking- to- his- brain distressed him more as even in his dream he was being portrayed as an aloof (procul), a misanthrope and afraid of mentoring.
During any such conversation he had no control over the tickertape which kept on scrolling along in a TV which he could not turnoff. This was alarming to say the least. Even during such episodes, he managed to wonder how so much information got packed and delivered in nano seconds!
One early morning, probably after an hour past the midnight the exact time as he had a helping of sweets at that time) a conversation with PowerPoint presentation, with bullet points, started in his mind.
He carried
penury in his pockets.
He is
afraid of heights.
He has
siblings.
He is
neither an extrovert not an introvert - an Otrovert?
He left the
place once he is finished there.
He did not get a respectable education..
Is this about a real person or his mind playing a midnight trick? If so, how could he identify the person? Or is it a mind game being played by the silent conversationalist? If so, whatever he had been hearing boils down to an act of pulling a thick woolen blanket over his head? He left the analytical part of the why and who that would come later as the day progressed.
That November morning did the trick. Mist hung in the air waiting for a gentle breeze or sun to climb a little higher over the horizon to drive it away as it was struggling to keep up the chill factor. As ChintaMany just started to tuck his lean and shivering body into a woolen sweater, to brave the chill, a Eureka moment took great pleasure in making an unexpected appearance to ambush him. Why should not it, as it is about to deliver a defining tool, to solve his puzzle!
At that moment, he was struggling to push his head through the neckline, and the thick neckband of the sweater was trying to spend some anger on him for being forcefully stretched over his pumpkin shaped head. Freezing cold on the outside and frozen mind from within, left him stranded in the sweater like a head sticking out of a manhole.
He segregated
the bullet points based on perceived synonymic traits.
The first
group challenged him with an identity crisis to resolve.
He carried
penury in his pockets.
He left the place once he is finished there.
He did not get a respectable education.
He iterated the above pointers many times over and to aid instant reference, he scribbled them on post-it slips and promptly stuck them on the fridge’s door. For no reason, he found himself often near the fridge which invariably invited his mistress’s glares, warning him of tress pass. This ‘tress pass’ glare resulted in an unannounced eureka moment. He would deal with this sort of unannounced arrivals later as now he needed them now and then. This moment led him to walk down the garden path towards a building site.
As he stood wondering, knowing not what is there in store, he saw a workman shoving a purse into his trouser pocket and then pick up a pail of paint. A careful detail collecting look at the man’s weather-beaten face told him the story. Lack of good education, which otherwise would have landed him in better job and surely, he will have to leave the place after finishing the job. As he had witnessed the purse being shoved into the pocket, he felt no issue with his penury assumption! Satisfied with the manner in which he had solved the puzzle and after reaching home pulled out the post it slips for group one.
He has
siblings.
He is
neither an extrovert not an introvert - an Otrovert?
This second group dared him to visit the realm of human psychology. He dug up the meaning of Otrovert and what he learnt stunned him. This type feels like a perpetual outsider with a sense of detachment and does not fit into the traditional categories. Wondering how this word came up in that PowerPoint presentation, ChintaMany believed a pictogram would jog his mind to work creatively to unmask the identity of the person. He immediately downloaded a pictogram from internet and kept it face up on his table. After a long time looking at the pictogram, he decided to keep it as a suspense as to what he had decoded about the second group, for now.
He is afraid of heights - acrophobic.
This candidate could either be an odd man out (mercifully not an odd woman out!) or seamlessly fit into the second group. He had the inkling that the person fitting this trait must be well known to him. He started to mentally tick off persons who do not exhibit fear of heights.
He started at chair level and
slowly climbed up the ladder. Enlarging the list, he included lifts, escalators
and as an outlier the mechanical contraptions like giant wheels and
rollercoasters. Now, you may have the doubt, “why did he leave out the jet
planes?”
Maybe, he did not want to fly that high to clear his doubt. ChintaMany also happens to be realist.
Going through all these filters and after ticking all the right boxes, only one person remained as the eligible candidate. The revelations shocked him and no other solution appeared appropriate. A sealed cover and keeping it hidden appeared to be the best option than revealing the identity. Is it a boon or a bane, this question turned him towards science, where he was comfortable to have a conversation or a direct discussion.
At this point, ChintaMany left us, high and dry wondering how did he fare as Sherlock Holmes and why did he keep the sealed cover hidden?
Ask the author, maybe he knows what is in the sealed cover.
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