Speak Directly

SPEAK DIRECTLY
K S Venkataraman

It is a very common occurrence in life to see some people talking not directly. It is a trick employed by mischief-mongers to provoke somebody else in the group or present in the vicinity.

Think of a room occupied by ten persons. Four persons are playing carom board and five fellows are watching. One is combing his hair and dressing. Obviously he is starting to meet somebody. One person playing carom board suddenly says loudly, “There is a boy here, who is thinking that he is Mister Universe and that girls stand in queue to become friends to him. But the truth is something very different.” The guile reference is obvious and all others laugh aloud, some of them directly looking at the boy combing his hair.
This is an example of using indirect speech for teasing or provoking or even bullying. This would end simply as a joke or in a big quarrel among the room-mates.
What I want to discuss here now is a different kind of indirect speech.

A husband returning from office would start narrating what happened in the office to his wife. He would give detailed description of how he was ill-treated or provoked; and how he wanted to react violently but controlled himself. He would present a solo harangue saying all of what he wanted to tell his manager or some other person who treated him badly but did not say.

If the wife is a sensible person, she would serve as a patient listener and reduce the tension of her husband; and finally would advise him to forget all of it and relax. If not, she would add her ideas how her husband should have reacted more aggressively in office and would also insist that he should not fail to follow tit-for-tat approach without fail.

What prevented him from reacting appropriately in the first instance? Why we should fail to say directly what we want on some occasions to the person conce
ed and then try to find some solace from indirect speeches?

There are many reasons for such behavior. Let us examine some important reasons.
(1) Respect towards the other person: We avoid saying all we think about a subject, when the other person happens to be our teacher, senior or any other person commanding real respect from us. In this case we should reconcile ourselves to what happened, as there was a valid reason for our reticent behavior.
(2) Fear: Mostly this is the reason that stops us from suppressing our natural responses. (3) Inopportune Moment: Sometimes the presence of somebody else, or the unfavorable circumstances would prevent us from reacting spontaneously.
(4) Lack of some information: We may not have known some very important relevant fact when the incident took place. Coming to know about this later on would show ourselves in a poor light.
(5) Afterthought: It would not have occurred to us at the first instance that the entire subject matter needed to be seen from a different angle. When it occurs to us subsequently, we resort to indirect speech.
(6) Intentional reaction: Sometimes, we want to send a message through the person to whom we are giving expression to our ideas. Thinking that the other person would certainly carry our words to whom they were left unsaid, we would have recourse to indirect speech. (Here speech is actually used as a mode of communication. If the ‘messenger’ is a bad fellow, expert in carrying tales, this would become the typical case of remedy being worse than disease.)

Whatever be the reason for our indirect speech, it is not a healthy habit. If it is out of respect, then it is our deliberate choice to bear with him. Then we should put the entire matter out of our mind. If we choose indirect speech in all other cases, it only indicates our weakness.
Of course, you should be a tremendously luck person, if you have a wife, friend, father or somebody else who could serve as a ‘listening board’ and would help you release your pent-up negative feelings without any side-effects at all. For this, that person should be a wise, talented and trained person; otherwise chances are that he or she would fall illrn.
The best thing is that we should develop the habit of presenting our views boldly and directly to the person conce
ed following good standard of speech and behavior.
Using open and straightforward speech as our mode of communication is always preferable.