It depends...

“It depends...see, suppose I...”

“Oh, cut it! That’s the typical diplomatic you!”

Did this happen to you, ever? It happens to me every other day. Like, you try to see both sides of a situation and you are called diplomatic. They say I’m not frank, I’m trying to appease, never giving a straight reply to anything. Pretending, hiding my own opinion, even among friends. Going roundabout, with no single answer to a question. Basically, not being me.

Darn! That’s me.

Whatever reply I’m giving is exactly what is going on in my head. If I am not giving a direct answer, it just means that according to me that question does not have a direct answer. They say I must have an opinion of course. Maybe I do, but there are always so many factors to be considered. Something might be good in some context, and not in another. But do ‘I’ like it or not? I might like it in some way, in some place, at some time, but you can’t give such things an absolute value, can you? And if you’re giving it an absolute value, you better mean it. And then, when you can see across to the other side so clearly and understand the implications, how can you escape? Your own opinion is bound to be affected.

But I was called a diplomat, always. So I thought I must be a really diplomatic person, you know, with all the subtle politics I’ve played in my home to maintain peace with, and between, my sister, my mom and my dad. My sister was very outspoken, and that did not have very peaceful consequences. No, I respect her way but it is not my way. And if things can be done in peace, what better way can there be?

So, what about friends? Quite obviously I do not have the same obligations here. Well, let’s see, I might want to know someone’s opinion without biasing them. Then again, I might not want to hurt them, so I say the same thing in a more acceptable manner. But in most cases I am so indifferent about the things they ask that I don’t even have an opinion of my own and so I think about the various possibilities associated and give an answer in each case. That’s when it’s serious. At other times, I just make fun of their questions.

Coming back to our discussion, there’s this girl, who calls me diplomatic and calls herself the rebel. But she cries when a professor has a bad impression of her, and then there’s this guy she does not want to talk to but she will not tell him that, she will tell him that she would love to talk to him but she is really busy at the moment. And yet, to everyone, I’m the diplomat and she is the rebel, she’s just being sweet.

Then one fine day, I meet this guy in some of these organisation meetings and we become great friends. Although I like the amount of effort he spends reflecting on things, I would really appreciate if he beat about the bush a little less and came to the point a little faster. ‘Little’ is just me being very diplomatic, or sweet, according to your liking. What happened once was that some junior girl had made a cartoon and she wanted to give it for the magazine. I missed the meeting that day for some reason, so I had called her to my room to have a look at the cartoon. I was simply awestruck by its dumbness and she departed, telling me that the guy, my friend, he had asked her to darken the shades a little before submitting it. If he, by any chance, meant it, he would be so dead. Well, he would be dead otherwise too, poor girl, she was going to colour it up for nothing! What a mean way to say ‘no’, I thought.

And I brought up this topic with him the next day, perhaps subconsciously using the adjective ‘dumb’ more number of times than usual. “Why the fuck can’t you just say what you mean?” And he retorted, “What do you want me to say? Should I have said her that this cartoon that you have made is so dumb? And hence we do not want it?”

I did not retort. Something struck me hard. Of course he couldn’t tell that to her, that would be mean. But he should have made the ‘no’ clearer, isn’t it? (Come on, girl makes her ‘no’ so clear to a boy but still he doesn’t get it. And over here you are making the ‘no’ so ambiguous and she is so passionate about it, how would she ever realise?) What I would have said, I thought...

It’s true, you know, someone has put in honest effort into something, and to her it might actually seem nice. To her, it might mean a lot. A ‘no’ should be very polite, I agree. But one shouldn’t confuse ‘polite’ with ‘ambiguous’. Okay, suppose I write an article and someone higher up does not want to publish it, there are many possible reasons: he might not like my writing style (It’s too informal I know, but I really can’t help), he might not like what I write about (he might find the subject irrelevant), he might not like the way I dealt with the topic (here he’s being biased). The first reason would hurt me the most. But if I am being refused I would sure want to know the real reason, it is very important to me. I would certainly consider it very disrespectful of him if he would have given me an ‘excuse’ and not a ‘reason’. Hmmm... Maybe I could have said her, sorry it’s not that funny, you must improve on the content next time. You know, criticism can do permanent damage to an artist. However, if you are 100% sure that the person in question is no artist, you can throw away your guilt.

The above situation was ridiculous, I know, but the way he thought, the reasons, they were not wrong. Here’s a diplomat, I thought. Worse than myself. Maybe, my friends feel the same way about me, what I felt about this guy. And like me, this guy is a diplomat, by his heart. There is no cure for such a disease.

There was another guy I knew, and a lot of times he just did things to satisfy other people. Normally I would have thought that’s gross but then I realise, to him, that is what life means. He does not have an identity without his friends, and their goodwill defines the person that he is. You can’t ask him to stop it and be himself because the moment he stops it, he won’t be himself.

Then again there’s this guy who claims he hates fake people but at the Subway Counter (it’s a food outlet) he asks the guy to put a little less tomato and more of jalapeno, and he has admitted that he says it just so that he doesn’t appear dumb. Okay.

There seems to be lots of Schrodinger’s cats at loose.

And then there’s this woman, who is accused of being selfish and egoistic, and sure she is, in some ways. But she balances it by doing things for everyone else behind their back, very selflessly, and so quietly that they never come to know and hence never appreciate. But that’s her.

Some people ask me, what your passion is. According to them, I am supposed to just do what I like and chill out the rest of the times by perhaps watching a movie. How do I explain to them that watching movies interests me in the least, and there is no one particular thing that I like?

You cannot apply the same formula everywhere. Everything doesn’t work for everyone. Every ‘natural’ behaviour is not ‘natural’ to everyone. Each individual must be seen in a light independent of prejudices past. Everyone applies different logic; everyone wants different things out of life.

I might sound very diplomatic, but what I say, I do mean. And I think THAT is more important, than giving a single answer that is correct 99% of the times. The other 1% still deserves to be talked about. (I guess that’s the reason I suck at ‘objective’ questions.)

I am not asking for much; just let me be what I am.

If I’m giving you an opinion, it is very likely not mine. But if I’m being diplomatic, it’s certainly me.