It’s Polite To Always Be Polite

 

A friend of mine, one of those ‘I-speak-my-mind’ types bragged into the coffee shop, where I was wistfully looking at a packet of sugar I had decided to give-up. She ordered her mocha and launched into an assault about a mutual acquaintance. Due to some old college rivalry, something to do with who hogged the mike on cultural day, they hated each other with an intensity that pettiness sometimes brings.

 

She claimed this girl was a ‘fake’. Apparently, when she met her she gushed about how lovely it was to meet her and went on to chitter-chatter about the weather. She even told my seething friend that her skin was positively glowing. Amused, I asked her what she did. She glared at the innocent mocha and said, ‘I grunted. I felt like yelling though, don’t talk to me I don’t like you.’

 

I asked her to imagine a situation where the next time both of them met they looked at each other and yelled out, ‘I hate you’ on cue and gnashed their teeth at each other. My friend’s anger vanished. Wryly, she smiled and admitted that would leave a rather unpleasant taste in the mouth.

 

I don’t understand why people can’t have a basic code of conduct. You may intensely dislike someone and not agree with their life choices or political leanings but when you meet them, isn’t it a common civility to say hello and talk about nothing very important till you can peacefully part ways again?

 

Why do we need to create drama in an interaction that will last a couple of hours? In my family, I have known uncles who completely despise each other. Yet, when they meet at a social function, there is always that nod of the head and perhaps an enquiry about how the banana tree has grown.

 

I wonder where they learnt this. In school? Office? Or is it something we absorb being a part of a civilised society? Yet, there are so many people who haven’t managed to grasp what being polite is about. They would rather be rude at the cost of anything, including themselves.

 

Another friend of mine has what she calls a ‘problem aunt’. A harridan of a woman who fights in every function, whether it is a wedding or a funeral. She comes barging in with imagined or real grievances and goes about insulting whomever she thinks is responsible for her pain.
 

Also read: Bite what's biting you
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In the beginning, the family quietly put up with it. Stage two was when they fought back and now finally, at stage three, they ignore her and don’t invite her for functions or get-togethers anymore. My friend tells me she sits in her house piling grievance over grievance, an unhappy, bitter woman carrying the burden of her anger.

 

Maybe one day she will grow up and realise she isn’t entitled to a society that will worship her every whim. She will understand that her happiness is connected to her own nicety. As for the rest of us, we should continue being our polite selves irrespective of the impolite people we bump into. For that’s how politeness works to make the world a worthier place.

 

 

 

Still Figuring It Out’ a funny, sad, questioning take on adulthood will appear every Saturday on Asianet Newsable. Arathi Menon is the author of Leaving Home With Half a Fridge, a memoir published by Pan Macmillan. She tweets at here. The views expressed here are her own.