Of Giving Your Viewpoint

My friend Shubro commented on my post on Aaddaabaajee ... Well, this reminded me of this little episode ... The guys almost beat me up.

Well, in our part of the world, swear words are quite customary ... you use them almost as punctuations (anybody who knows any Punjabi would know this, and of course, Delhi is so, so Punjabi ...). And as such, these pearls of poetic wisdom used to flow freely in our intellectual interactions. They almost used to decorate our prose, and punctuate our discussions, much like the cigarettes used to. Though, of course, i am yet to find out which of the two were the more valuable communication aids.

As it would be ... there was a debate underway ... passionate discussion, if you may (which is where most discussions used to be, after around 5 cigarettes having been smoked in the space of an hour!). So passionate that, as usual, tempers were frayed, and participants were quite eagerly delivering swear words at random. The topic of the debate?

Does familiarity allow us to use swear words with friends, or is this a sign of bad manners!

Trust the guys to not understand the irony of the nature of the debate. As you might have guessed, i wasnt there (since the debate hadnt yet reached rarefied heights). Well, i walked into the narrow alley which was Atlas Radios, pipe in mouth. Being the "impartial" one, the two sides jumped at me, and asked me what i think about the topic. Holding the pipe, chewing on its end, knotting my brows, and thinking from my impartial platform, the only response i could muster was ...

It depends on what viewpoint you hold.

Of course, thats the impartial view. Listen ... i go one way, i get bashed up by one set of guys, and i go the other way, well ... you get the picture! Sitting on the fence was the safe option. Or so i thought. The response this brought on was something i obviously cant write here (folks might object to it), but it definitely was quite in flow of things, and i almost got bashed up by both the set of folks.