Let’s Talk

Rs 1,000. Its founders — who,like their dozen-odd ‘tookers’ (talking hookers),met clients under assumed names — claimed it was an idea whose time would come. It wasn’t unlike paying for bottled water,they argued. After a handful of sessions on music,poetry,literature and life,the idea fizzled out,in the way many conversations do.

As tipsters on dating websites obsess over the flustered pauses,the blank moments and other embarrassments that douse the spark of a conversation (read pick-up talk),greater forces are stifling interpersonal exchanges of thought and experience. “A major problem of our time is individual isolation. Most people know very little about nations,religions and industries other than their own,and cannot understand specialists in other disciplines,” says Theodore Zeldin,a historian,former Oxford dean and founder-president of the Oxford Muse Foundation,a non-profit based in London that fosters in-person interactions. “I am advocating a New Conversation,whose aim is to establish mutual trust and understanding rather than just spending time or arguing; it expresses a new attitude of curiosity about others,and a wish to absorb the experience of others,so it implies a willingness to emerge a slightly different person,” Zeldin says.

The Oxford Muse Foundation organises an annual conversational meet for about 200 people from all walks of life,called The Feast of Strangers — a shared lunch,with a menu of conversations that includes asking each other intimate questions about ambitions,fears and passions — where participants are randomly paired and invited to engage in meaningful conversation with the intention of getting to know each other in two hours. The Foundation recently organised a conversational dinner in Delhi.

If conversation is plumbing the depths of each other’s souls,the Knights of the Square Table,a group of dozen-odd men who gather every day around a table by the kitchen at Koshy’s — one of the few cafes in Bangalore conducive to rambling day-long conversations — would rather not stake a claim to the word. Yet,here they are,consultants and filmmakers,retired executives and photographers,some of the last exponents of India’s coffee-house culture,fielding questions about themselves and their city,debating politics and news,reviewing food and films,in a three-hour round of conversational ping-pong over coffee. “You’re here to write an obituary of conversation? Not yet,” says Prem Koshy,laughing.

He presides over the table like a gracious host,ordering a round of coffee and pulling up a chair for anyone who ambles in and waves his way. “Why do we talk? We talk so we can hear our own voice — a validation of our existence,” says Koshy,who runs the restaurant set up by his grandfather. “It’s a relief as well as an addiction,” says Shama Bhat,a chartered accountant who has been dropping by every day,for many years,for a chat and a coffee. “It’s not a binding agreement. If I don’t turn up one day,no one will call,” he says.

Over the next hour,the other “knights” file in,and each weaves his bit into the conversation that quilts the morning. Their stories are challenged,coddled,interpreted,till they segue into a sort of light banter. “If this is the art of conversation,yes,we are good at it,we do this every day,” says Nausheer Hameed,a retired executive. So when Shovan Sen,an advertising consultant,recollects a cigarette ad that sums up the perfect evening — “Pretty women,heady wine,sparkling conversation” — he knows exactly the remonstrations it will evoke and has a trump card ready. “Sexist? The ad was written by a woman,” he says.

It is the fear of offending each other,says Hameed,that lulls people into bored consent. “If I say the coffee is good and you agree,the conversation ends there,” he says. The conversation at the Square Table continues well into the “sapad brigade” — a Thursday ritual where the knights set out to sample the best food the city has to offer. “These are the things we live for — good food,leisure and conversation,” says Koshy.

Not everyone feels that way. Asha Prasad,a lawyer who likes to throw parties at her Mumbai residence,says all the cocktail events she hosted last year were based on themes like Bollywood,karaoke,salsa dancing and foosball. “Parties with just food,wine and good company are considered boring. People no longer just want to socialise,but to chill out,” she says.

This attitude,says Shivananda Salgame,a Mysore-based educationist and entrepreneur,is being passed on in good measure to children. “With nuclear families and busy parents,children don’t have anyone to interact with at home except their PlayStations. They rarely go out to play and spend considerable time watching TV,a strictly one-way medium that is the exact opposite of grandma’s stories. At school,too,they no longer learn from hearing,but visually,so the importance of talk is never realised. If conversation skills are not cultivated in the first 15 years,the child will most likely not be sociable when older,” he says. In an effort to bridge the conversational gap between generations,Salgame has,for the past few years,been organising a yearly gathering of his extended family,with over a hundred people in attendance.

Salgame has a word for what passes for conversation today — snacking. “Just as we’ve transitioned from three whole meals to bouts of snacking through the day,so have our interactions been reduced to bits and pieces of communication: SMSes,email,Facebook posts and phone calls,” he says,sipping a coffee in one of Bangalore’s noisy,new-generation cafes thronged by laptop-wielding professionals plugged into the free WiFi network.

The internet and the mobile revolution have forever changed the way we interact. We have a thousand “friends” on Facebook who we rarely exchange a word with,and hundreds of names in our phonebook we haven’t met in years. Vriti Malik,a 23-year-old content writer from Delhi, says she finds it convenient to send text messages and post on Facebook walls rather than talk on the phone or meet someone. “Expressing myself in fewer words on Twitter and writing what I may not feel — using happy emoticons and signing off with ‘love’,for instance — come very naturally. I am certain that I am connected to some people on a very superficial level,” she says.

Bishakha Datta,filmmaker and trustee on the board of the Wikimedia Foundation,agrees that the digital age has spawned shallow relationships. “You see it everywhere,in a restaurant where a couple sits in complete silence,each one typing on their cellphones while they wait for their food to arrive. Part of me wants to say: Why go out to eat together if you’re not going to talk? The other part of me recognises that they’re socialising,but in a different way,” she says. Datta says she enjoys the diversity of hundreds of friends with whom one can exchange little tidbits,and the intimacy of a few friends with whom one can stay up all night chatting. “But most of what I know of life,love and relationships came from these deep conversations — not from the surface exchanges,” she says.

While advocates of meet-and-talk make it a point to distinguish between conversation and communication,those in the digital fold feel differently. If Henry Thoreau liked to move conversations from his living room with three chairs to the pine woods outside,some thinkers today like to engage in dialogue on the vast grounds of the internet.

“I would argue that if you take into account online mailing lists and discussion forums which make it easy to connect with like-minded individuals,there has never been more deep discourse than there is now. Even email enables extended thoughtful communication that was never possible before,” says Freeman Murray,an angel investor

who has supported several internet start-ups in India.

The Oxford Muse,while it might be about talking,is also building an online game where people can pick one of over 400

topics to strike up a “real” conversation with one another.

Nikhil Velpanur,entrepreneur,innovator and TED India fellow,says technology has rendered long conversations unnecessary. “Technology has democratised information. Imagine a scene from the past — people sitting around a tree talking politics. It would take hours simply bringing people up to speed and debating individual opinions. Cut to modern times — news has already reached everyone,opinions have already been shared via Facebook statuses and tweets. Hence a rich conversation about politics takes a shorter time,” he says. “Technology is making us smarter. Do you seek knowledge anymore via a long conversation? No,you Google and Wiki it. You are tapping into a global brain that’s at your fingertips. There is no need to have long conversations anymore.”

At the same time,in overt acknowledgement of the pleasures of real-life interaction,bloggers and online groups are meeting offline more than ever before. Priya Sebastian says she rarely refuses an invitation to meet fellow bloggers. “It is in these face-to-face meetings that real bonds and friendships are created. We are programmed to observe and register nuances in facial expression or tone of voice and react to different energies

and moods. This cannot be done virtually,” she says.

Karthik Srinivasan,a product manager at Samsung,Bangalore,says that the digital media has flooded us with information and reduced our attention spans. “So we prefer shorter conversations. But it may not necessarily be a bad thing,” he says. As studies have shown,however,skimming the surface of all this information has not translated into knowledge. “Thus the lack of content in conversations. Few of us have the time to read books or pursue the arts. With the result,at a gathering,we have nothing to talk about,” says Salgame.

Often,however,it is not a lack of things to talk about,but the refusal to talk about them,that causes problems. Ali Khwaja,a counsellor in Bangalore,says he has seen marriages collapse because couples only engaged in superficial talk. “A conversation does not mean talking shop while your emotions are boiling over. It means talking about yourself,expressing your pleasure and displeasure. The ‘I’ factor in conversations between husband and wife is the glue of a relationship,” he says. Khwaja notes that busy couples do not get enough time to spend with each other but while away weekends attending parties and going on trips with friends. “They invariably do not give importance to one-on-one conversation,” he says.

Rajat Sivamani,a California-based IT professional who was in an online relationship for three years,seconds that. “There is no substitute for looking each other in the face,sharing concerns and regrets,having a real conversation about life. It is much easier to evade each other’s feelings when you don’t meet every day,” he says.

Amruth BR,entrepreneur and technology researcher at the Jeanne Sauvé Foundation,Canada,attributes the marginalisation of conversation to a “mainstream life”. “People are expected to do so many things that they learn to filter out their emotions for everything that is not connected with the goals society expects them to fulfill. But once you put them in a different environment (like a university) or when they break free from such expectations,they tend to care a lot more about the different things around them,” he says.

Remember how a train journey meant making a new friend? Spontaneous interaction between strangers seems to have given way to new boundaries and strictly purposeful communication. Says Sonali Anmol,an advertising executive from Pune,“Talking to strangers was not such a bad thing. We don’t have the time for it anymore,so we build a fence around ourselves,” she says. Successful advertising campaigns,she says,can get people talking. “If you talk to your friends about a product you are excited about,the ad is a success. If you don’t — and increasingly people don’t care enough to talk about products,except on ad blogs — the ad is a failure,” she says.