THE subject of conversation within the family has had its own importance in human society. The quality of conversation among members of the family decides the quality of culture of the people, a fact that has been recognised since time immemorial, so to say. Yet, unfortunately, most of us forget what conversation actually means -- not in the dictionary way, but in spiritual actuality. In the modern society where gadgets such as computers and mobile phones dominate human behaviour, the conversation in the family often gets a secondary status. And this is the actual grief, one must assert.

 

 

The loud-thinker has touched upon this subject in countless episodes of this column. Yet, he gets tempted to open the subject again for discussion. The reason is simple: today’s family happens to be losing the culture of fine conversation among members. By any standard, this should be a matter of real concern for all of us who care for family as a spiritual organisation far beyond the mundane nature of multiple relationships a family has -- mother, father, children, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles ...!

However, most of us tend to consider the family only as a web of relationships of a complex nature. In reality, the family is much more than that, so to say. It is a forum of togetherness, a platform to stand upon and look at life through a collective lens into the past and into the future, a cocoon whose womb-like warmth gladdens every parched and tired soul, a cathedral in which prayers assume a practical presence, a mansion in which lofty ideas take birth and move forth ...!

 

And all these happen in a condition which the humans have come to call conversation -- by way of which multiple verses confluence: My verse, your verse, everybody’s verse ... joins into a confluence and flows in an invigorating togetherness of ideas, thoughts, dreams ...!

And by the way, what is a verse? -- one may ask.

Verse is one’s own ideas, one’s own poetry, one’s own song, one’s own emotion, one’s own thought on every possible thing under the Sun.

 

In this light, then, let us deconstruct the word ‘conversation’, which we have already done a few lines before -- when everybody’s verse is welcomed to join the confluence of many verses, then what takes place is conversation. In such a confluence, there is every scope for discussion and discourse, but not for a senseless debate that has no logical culmination -- something in the manner of those shouting matches on television.

The conversation in a true sense has attributes such as accommodation, acceptance, respect, eagerness to welcome other’s input.

 

Such a conversation is possible in the family -- provided we understand its importance and make efforts to nurture such a dialogue among ourselves. Unfor-tunately, most of us engage ourselves only in mundane talk that is so shorn of poetic ideation and dreaming. That is the reason why most families actually do not engage themselves in what is known as conversation.

 

When this subject came up at a small family-get-together, one man in his sixties said dryly, “Oh, this is poetry. It does not work in a family.”

When the loud-thinker asked him “Why?”, he had no answer. For, all he knew is talk about meals and bathing and getting ready to go to work, coming back home tired, watching television, getting angry with wife or children ...! -- Oh the mundane issues! Never-ending!

Then, where and how does one get time to think of something higher and finer?

That is the actual issue -- of real conversation within the family, among the members of the family!