I talk. A lot.

A lot. Really.

Imagine a carrier truck which is carrying 20 SUVs. Now imagine a Nano inside each SUV, and Bajaj Chetaks between the busty bumpers of all the SUVs. On both tiers. Quite a house full, no? Wait, I’m not finished yet. Know too that the driver decided to take his wife and his triplets for a joy ride, and each baby carried three of the biggest toys they had, and the mother a diaper bag the size of all three babies put together. She had to, what are you a, non-parent? Anyway, there’s more. It rained so the driver gave a ride to a muscled man with a chest as wide as a carrom board who actually had the heart of a kitten and so he was taking the stray goat in his hands to the hospital. Fully grown adult goat, no kid-ding. His bicycle of course had to be adjusted between the door of the carrier and one scooter, where a family of babblers were hitching a free ride in the rain.  

Doesn’t that sound a lot? Packed! Well, when translated into a quantity that’s how much I talk. 

But that’s just me. 

You see, I tried to talk my way out of my mother’s womb the moment I stopped looking like a cross between a fish, a sea horse and a unicycle. I resorted to polite convincing first but all I heard in return were sounds of the blender making goodies for my daddy. I spoke my heart out to my surroundings but how much can you talk to the walls? Bloody ones at that! Soon as legs came along I tried kicking to let me out, for I wanted to talk and was bored of ‘Wilson’ from ‘Castaway’ I had imagined on my U-chord to communicate with. Once I hugged it so tight the doctor’s eyes popped out while looking at the ultrasound as if it was her neck I held. I could have, for who uses forceps on a baby? Look how my head is shaped now. Anyway, point being, no one heard me talk. If I had a pen I would have written my stories on the womb’s wall. Finally one day, I came out. Talking, of course.  

And I haven’t stopped. I can’t. If there is something to be said, I will talk. If there isn’t, I will still talk. Like right now, and I’m not half-way done yet. But you seem to be reading like a true friend and I take that as encouragement to continue. This post is 1500 words long. Love. Hugs. Muah!

So, I can talk in any position and on any topic. 

I can hang upside down from trees like an opossum and deliver sermons on how to live a very straight life. Palm facing front, calm on the face, pearls coming out my mouth and being hurriedly noted in diaries called ‘Life’s Little Instruction Book’. Or so I assume. But I must sound wise. I must. You see, why else would my husband stand at the bathroom door every morning?

Oh, I mean I have to talk to him as I scrub Lux body wash in the shower. He shaves his stubble near the door. I have to talk, and he has to hear me over the water. No time like a fresh morning to motivate those men to go work, earn the bread, we love you dear, get the dry cleaning, we need new buckets, I will kill the maid, can we buy shoes today. Why am I asking? Of course we can! Come in time. With a towel on my head and feeling fresh I do come out talking too. How else do you think I ask why he is shaving on the bathroom doormat and not at the basin? These men can drive us crazy!

Drive! 

My driving instructor warned me he was talkative while he taught. Poor guy! Three weeks and I saw a shiny pond appear in the middle of his head. For the first hour of the first day he regaled me with heroic tales of how he has driven trucks and buses and maybe both together on roads half the size of my middle finger. When I began talking, he looked as if the trucks ran over him. Well, one almost did once. I was busy telling him about a neighbour who was so handsome, so handsome that I wanted to propose to him and for sure my parents wouldn't mind because why should they? Huh? We women have rights and we are not bound by another’s shackles and oh I want to become his wife and cook for him and bear him kids and dare anyone get in the way of this alpha-beta-gamma heart of mine when he had to scream to remind me the two headlights approaching me head-on belonged to a truck and not two motorcycles. I did stop talking, of course. It was scary, so scary that for that one second I thought I was going to die and then, on the way back, I told driver uncle my philosophy of death and how sad I was my goldfish died and how best to keep their water clean, in 101 steps. 

Water reminds me… 

I can talk underwater too. Okay, maybe not much but I do try. I was told try, try, try and you will succeed. God bless Ramadev ji, or was it Chetan? Once I did speak a whole sentence under water in the pool, complimented a pair of feet with night-glow nail polish and how they matched the frill of the costume but before I reached the full stop in went the water and up rose the gorge. Yes, the French fries came out quite intact. So interesting! They are one-piece even in the depths of the innards? Anyhow, the nail polish shrieked and left the pool. Oh well, now I always get traffic-free laps, as I talk to the blue tiles 12 feet below me. I just wonder why the life-guard doesn’t want to hear about my FB life when I back-stroke? Probably because he is yet to open an account? Dinosaur! 

Where was I? Yes. So, I talk on dance floors till my partner forgets his steps, excuses himself to go to the loo and runs off from the ventilator. I talk in crystal clear language even in my dreams, so much so I have been offered the job of a Communications Manager for a best-selling author. I refused, of course. What kind of a man cuts his girlfriend into half? Sheesh! Oh, and I’m quite a stunt-woman when it comes to talking with food in the mouth. Fine, some bits fly onto other’s plates but hey, that much less fatty food enters me then, isn’t it?

Just one principle I follow in my talk-life - I never talk behind turned backs. What’s the point when the winning dog from the dog show isn’t listening to what the bitch thinks?

And now to cut this short story shorter.

There is a kind of talking I will never do again, and that is for an interview which is being recorded.

Ishaan Lalit, from Sixth World Radio and his brother, Kartik, cornered me like ninjas with free coffee on the table and a cushy 5-star sofa under my derrière and made me talk for three whole hours. From books to writing, geo-politics to Indian politicians, Facebook to blocking, blogging to just bloke-ing, parenting to too-cool-for-school-kinda-topics, I did what I love doing – I talked and talked and talked. But, listening to myself talk on a radio is a different doll game altogether. 

Of course I don’t sound like a fool. It was my first time with a dictaphone before me and a video being shot clandestinely (I should have worn my pearls, really!) and truth be told it was quite a lot of fun. But like I said, when sight becomes hind, even a talker like me may want to kick her own behind for saying things as if she was out of her mind. And all good things begin with a ‘fore’, not ‘hind’. (Holy Haiku! Did all this just rhyme?)

Never again will I get interviewed, recorded and video-graphed at the same time. So let me just say here, I’m never ever doing that again! (For relaxation of this rule, contact me at thetalker@icantalk.ikid with crisp notes!) 

Here is the link to a 6 minute video for readers of my blog. Since the deed was done, I might as well go down in full public view. Down. And down. And further down into the sea of embarrassment. Till no one can see my red face.

But now you know what I will do when I am on the seabed. Talk, of course. How else do you think you can hear me right now?

PS - Before I stop, here is the link to the full podcast. Okay, now I stop.


[WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - Have you ever gone to a new place or tried a new experience and thought to yourself, “I’m never doing that again!” Tell us about it.]