Well the reason I named my website 'A-fine-line' was because I
feel in this world it’s that thin line which separates everything. Love from
hate, night from day, fat from thin. Even though one subject might get multiple
opinions, there is always a universal standard set. Who has set it? May be our ancestors,
may be today’s youth, may be the media, and may be all of them together. Funny
thing is how blindly we all follow it. Today, however, I wanted to talk about
drawing the line in terms of talking/commenting/letting out our opinions to
friends and family.
Why has the world become so vulnerable that whatever we
might say can have an evil interpretation? For instance, when I was doing my Masters
in Germany, on one usual day, I happened to compliment a girl in my class, as I
had noticed that she came to college with a different hair do. My compliment was, “ Hey X, you are looking
different!” (yes, there was really an exclamation in my intonation and a highly positive one with a
smiley attached). But, her face sank and she almost feeling offended said to
me, “Oh is it so bad?”. I, obviously,
immediately, started to defend my statement and told her that I meant she looked
very nice, sweet and simple. Oh! there you go, I didn’t realize that it would
become negative again. The half German and Russian couldn’t understand my Indo-Asian
meaning of “Simple” and said.” What do you mean simple? (frowning her
eyebrows). By now, I felt whatever comes out of my mouth will just sound wrong.
So, I just ended it by saying, I mean you are looking very beautiful. Well,
that was that. She didn’t seem to believe me anyway. Now my question is, if I had to pass a nasty
comment on her, why would I stop her in the hallway and tell it on her face. I
mean, may be some people do that, but she knew me for almost a year then, and I
have always been kind to her, why on earth, would I do that? I wouldn’t even do
it to my haters!
Another time, a very close family friend just stopped
visiting us because I had complimented her and she thought I was mean. Since
there was no guilt in my heart, I never even realized that she had stopped
coming to our place, until she told my mom how hurt she was with my comment. Alright,
misunderstandings happen, that is why we have that word. But, where is the
moral responsibility of people to come and give you a benefit of doubt and ask
you to explain yourself. Where is the trust, when you know me since my diaper
days and haven’t had a single history of anything bad? So, this close friend
stood first in her university and got a gold medal. To share her happiness, she
came home with sweets. My mom wasn’t at home, so I was the only one attending
her. In a similar circumstance, my mom would say, “hey congratulations, I wish
you have many more of such victories and may you get more and more chances to
come and share it with us”. This sounds kinda very nice in my native language
Bengali. But those days, I wasn’t so good at Hindi and I said the same in Hindi
and she thought I meant something like: ‘ you are such a show off to run and
come to our house all the time’. My oh My! It has been almost 15 years, we talk
to eachother and everything, but I hope that someday, she understands that I just couldn’t
have meant anything bad towards her and it was just my 'Hindi' that’s it!
Well I can go on and on, but I wish to stop here. I
would expect people to trust each-other more. Remove the doubts in your mind. I
know I myself would have misunderstood many, and I am genuinely sorry for that. One should not
feel shy to come and ask for an explanation. It can only make things better. Don’t
forget to look at the bottom line always. My dad says, “if you are in a doubt whether or not to cross
the road, choose not to (pessimistic approach), because that cannot harm you
and if you are in a doubt whether a friend or loved one meant to hurt you, believe
that they didn’t mean to (optimistic approach).”