It’s a moment of epiphany to realise that mankind’s problem is not how to end a conversation but why start it in the first place
Most human conversations start pointlessly, meander for a while and struggle to end. Illustration by C Y Gopinath using AI
I can remember when if you wanted to talk to someone, you did. You would pick up the phone, dial the number and say, “Hey, friend, long time no speak.” You could count on them to pick up the call, and you’d both have a nice old chinwag.
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If they were in a different country, then one of you might be paying steep STD charges, and the chat might end rather abruptly with, “Ok, gotta go. This thing is getting too costly now. You take care.”
All that changed in February 2009, when an application with the truly infantile name of WhatsApp burst on the scene. In 15 years, it has changed the etiquette and modalities of human communication. Nowadays, you must first text a person for permission to call them because God knows what they might be in the thick of. Busy? Got a moment? Quick call? Quick question. Please call when able. After all, your intention is small talk, not coitus interruptus.
The person you’re calling, meanwhile, has various strategies for declining. He can turn off Read Receipts, those little check marks that tell you your message has been seen (even if not read). Or they can claim that Truecaller didn’t recognise you and filtered out your message.
Even if the call is picked up, there are devilish ways to end it. Feigning inaudibility is the most common. You say Hello a few times, followed by shouting I can hear you fine. Can you hear me? and (muttering) How I hate WhatsApp! and (shouting again) I’m in a dead zone. Call I call you later?
Over these WhatsApp years, we’ve also realised something dismal about ourselves. Most human conversations just suck. They start pointlessly, meander long after they’ve said what they needed to and struggle to end.
“You may not have the vocabulary to shut down the conversation without feeling that you’re going to be rude, so you endure listening to other people far longer than you’d actually want to,” writes Robert Feldman, the author of The Liar in Your Life: The Way to Truthful Relationships.
One reason people end up with the conversational equivalent of chopped liver, he says, is that they find it nearly impossible to simultaneously be honest and be considered polite while ending a conversation.
In WhatsApp, though, you don’t need a beginning or an ending. You can start abruptly with the main point—Bought onions?—and you end without goodbyes. Don’t forget khakras. No unnecessary words.
I recently found myself on at Dadar station trying to figure out on which platform I should wait for a Churchgate-bound train. I turned to a tired-looking, middle-aged man standing near me, and said, “Excuse me, I need to go to Churchgate.”
Without waiting for my question, he said, “Cross over to that platform. Not this next one but the one after that.”
I set off at once, but he had more to say. “If you want Fast, go this other side, next platform, not that side,” he called out after me.
I wanted Fast and sprinted up the stairs. Then I realised he was now following me, pretending not to. “Take right. Fast is better,” he urged me.
On the platform, still close behind me, he said, “Wait here. Train will come.” Then he was gone, without waiting for gratitude.
It was a brilliant conversation, as succinct as you can get outside WhatsApp. Not an extra word in it, and no tension about how to terminate it.
Many find it necessary to put the blame on some situation beyond their control—a Zoom call, a meeting, a visit to a dying relative, a dentist appointment, an urgent incoming call—to end the conversation politely. To Feldman, it’s ridiculous to consider that you should even need a valid reason for ending it, as though an ideal conversation would go on forever.
“Very few people are hurt when a conversation ends,” says Alison Brooks, a Harvard professor who teaches conversational skills.
Probably there is no conversation-stopper as egregious as, “I’ll let you go.” It’s a Jedi mind game that makes it look like the other person, not you, is impatient to end the banter. You come out shining as a thoughtful friend, regretfully going along though you’d like to patter on endlessly.
At a Vipassana meditation course, attendees must commit to ten days of silence. No speaking is allowed. Combined with the intense focus on meditation, you enter a placid, introspective and reflective state. Your metabolic efficiency increases: your breath becomes steady and your lungs process every bit oxygen that goes in.
Everything slows down; your nails and hair hardly grow. Except for the one-hour evening discourse on meditation, you don’t hear a single spoken word.
However, when the rules are lifted on the last day, unfettered pandemonium breaks loose as voices repressed too long are set free and begin jabbering, like Mumbai cars honking pointlessly at an intersection. No one is listening to anyone else, and no one will remember anything later.
It’s a moment of epiphany when you realise that mankind’s problem is not how to end a conversation but why even start it in the first place.
You can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper
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