Pritam's Blog
The Curious Case Of Hi-Hello-Hey
“Did you ever send those Hi-Hello-Hey messages to anyone? Like desperately?” my girl asked.
“I am not sure. I will have to check,” I replied. I couldn’t remember if I had ever done that. It seems unlikely now but you never know…
I mean a part of growing up is to embrace hypocrisy. You tend to forget all the unspeakable things you did when you were younger.
So, I decided to check the old messages on Facebook. And not surprisingly, I stumbled upon a few such messages. I was 19-20 years old (that’s not an excuse). Not the bob-vagene type messages. Just harmless ’Hi’s.
Mostly, I had messaged them to ask if they were OK with me making a sketch of them. Yeah, I used to do that in the initial days.
I was never very smart. Especially, at that age, I had tremendous personality issues. Engaging in small talks with the hope of getting laid wasn’t something I could contemplate. Not because I thought it was stupid. I wished I could do that but I didn’t have the confidence. That’s the truth.
But whatever it is, I too had exhibited traits of being an annoying creature. The intent behind such acts and the level of my desperation aren’t in the scope of this writing. It was wrong, annoying, irritating. Period. And I am sorry. So yeah, I have no right to decide if those were harmless ’HI’s.
It took me a few years more to come out of my shell. I was in a better place. I was (and still am) socially (and social-media-wise) awkward but now I could fake things. I could sound smart and intelligent. I could pretend to be charming. Maybe I am 😁 I made a lot of friends during this period but never got emotionally (not romantically, I repeat, not romantically) attached to any of them.
But this phase too didn’t last for long. For whatever reason, I became a cynical person. Conversations with most people seemed pointless… Not that I had any superiority complex, but I found most people predictable and hence, boring.
So, I was happy with whatever bare minimum, day-to-day conversation I used to have with my colleagues and friends and those rowdy autowallahs of Bangalore.
I have been working from home for almost five months now. No interaction except for those work-related daily meetings and video conferences. Honestly speaking, I don’t miss humans much. I don’t miss talking.
But what I do miss are stories. There’s not much scope of stumbling upon stories when you are home for such prolonged period.
Cleaning the friend list the other day and getting rid of unnecessary people (read my previous post) has made my Facebook feed more interesting. People who never showed up in my feed are now showing up. Seems like there are quite a few interesting humans out there. Humans who are empathetic, who still got their conscience alive, who are intelligent and funny and honest…
A part of me wants to drop a ‘Hi’ in their inbox. The cynical part stops me. And then there’s this third part who knows how pissed off people get when random people try to start a pointless-mindless-purposeless conversation. And I respect that.
My goodness. Life at 30 sucks.