दक्षिणी मराठी खजाना

ऐकणे

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Listening is an art. Many may be good speakers but not good listeners. Now when we try to make home a point, the other person or persons with whom we are interacting may interrupt often and we will end up forgetting our point. There are some people who will feign as if they are listening, but in fact they would be turning their deaf ears towards the speaker with a wooden face and this can be easily spotted. If wiser counsel prevailed, the speaker would stop speaking.

 

Now let us take classes in the Colleges,

for example, I did my graduation thru’ an Evening College. Not many students would attend all periods, I was an exception. My work spot was near Karol Bagh in New Delhi and the College was in Lodhi Colony. After office hours I would wait for a bus to Connaught Place and from there another bus to Lodhi Colony. Most of the times my Economic Professor Mr. Malhotra would pick me up from the Bus stand and while driving he would keep talking to me on so many things and I would be listening and answering questions he would be posing.

 

The classes would start at 6.40 PM and would go up to 1040 in the night. In winter to go home after the classes would be very difficult. To come to the subject, some Lecturers/Professors would make the forty-minute period strenuous, many students would skip such periods. There was an English Professor, an elderly Sardarji, Prof. Kishen Singh, whose period no student would ever miss. He would make everybody listen to him by his style and articulation.

 

And there was an English lecturer Mr. D.P.Singh who was known for ‘teaching English through Hindi’. One evening while dealing Rudyrad Kipling’s Essay describing his childhood days in Bombay, stating that Bombay Roads used to be desolate without much traffic. I got up and asked him, ‘what was the reason for less traffic?’, he wouldn’t reply but asked me to meet him in staff room after the period was over. When I went to the staff room, he asked me as to why were I raising embarrassing questions in the class room. I told him I just wanted the lecturer to make the students know that during the time referred to by Rudyard Kipling in his essay motor cars were yet to make entry in India. His classes would be half empty and the ones in the Class room would not listen to the lecture.

 

In my service extending forty plus years, I have worked with several bosses, many of whom are still in touch with me. The one who was my boss at the time of my superannuation is more than a boss to me. Even now he talks to me, mostly over phone. The other day he rang up in the evening – he was away from Chennai for almost three weeks – (for the viewers of Sun TV) the call started as did Mundhaanai Midichu which went on for half-an-hour followed by Paasa Malar which was also for half-an-hour and he was still talking and I was listening! He was keen to apprise me of everything that happened during the three weeks of his absence from Chennai. Luckily news break came, he does not miss 7 PM news on Sun News, he apologetically told me, ‘Sorry rr Sir, News interruption is there, I shall call you later!’

 

My son often tells me, ‘He was your boss, instead of your calling him and talking, you make him call you, why don’t you call him now and then?’ I have a prepaid connection and I just cannot afford to recharge on weekly basis.

 

Now RR writes ‘Ek Kshana Aikathaanthaka?’ which should not extend beyond ek (as the title suggests) or two or at the most ten kshanaas but he writes for half-an-hour and many members considering the age of the writer, ‘like’ the post or make some ‘not so unsavoury’ comments with many skipping the post at the very sight of the writer’s name.

 

If only he talks on the subject, hardly would there be a listener. Whether or not the subject spoken is interesting, absorbing or worth listening, at least with a view not to hurting the feelings of the speaker, we should be good listeners!