How good or bad is your telephone etiquette?

Check this out. Are you one of those people who call someone, hear the call waiting beep on your line, and say, Hey I gotta go, there’s another call coming in, while you abruptly disconnect.

Do you dial a number and say ‘Hello, who’s speaking?’ before introducing yourself.

These days, everyone appears to be on one major trip, every second counsellor has the same thing to say – Just be yourself. Sounds easy enough. After all who can best be YOU than you yourself? And yet, when you think about it, you’ll discover that it is the most difficult thing to be. In any situation.

Let’s take a situation where you’ve received a proposal of marriage and the guy with his family has come to see you. Dressed in your best, you sit decorously and assume the butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth stance and shyly answer questions aimed at figuring out what you really are like beneath that ‘look good, project good’ surface. But you like what you’re looking at and you so want to impress him. Since you’re not sure that he’ll find the ‘real’ you fascinating enough, you put up a façade of being the ‘perfect’ traditional Indian woman, someone who’ll always wait on her husband hand on foot, someone whose mind has been kept on hold till permission to think has been granted!

Everybody knew about Jasmine and Ravi. Though some people believed there might be more to it than meets the eye, the rest accepted that it was a beautiful, platonic friendship between a very lovely woman and a smart, intelligent man.

Jasmine was about ten years older to Ravi but his experience and understanding of life was infinitely greater than hers. So she depended upon him for most problems that she could not sort out on her own. One of her major problems concerned her husband. A chronic womaniser, he was also a very stingy man who showered his lovers with expensive gifts but refused to look after his wife.  It was Ravi who helped Jasmine get a job in his office and become a financially independent woman. “Don’t walk out of the marriage,” he advised. “Just make yourself a stronger person in every way.”

I am not on the Surgeon General’s team. Nor part of the anti-smoking lobby. In fact I was a smoker for years, and enjoyed every puff until my lungs started dropping broad hints that it was time to quit, so I graciously gave in (I figured I need my lungs more than my lungs need me, if you know what I mean!)

No, it is not that. It is the whole image thing, the lifestyle thing, and the one thing we tend not to talk about its impact on one’s personality, image, sex appeal. Of course years ago no hero worth his salt was seen without a cigarette dangling from his lips (what on earth would have happened to Clint Eastwood I wonder), and it was not politically incorrect to have smoke-filled scenes. And really, a man DID look more macho. But how come no one talks about the follow-through? Maybe it is not such a nice topic. But here it is.

How dishonest are people in love! Bit of a shocking accusation, but think about it. People in love, or dating, very often do not show their true colours. And that does not augur well for the future of the relationship. Some examples:

He used to just adore me in slightly daring clothes, but now that we are engaged he wants me to cover up and play the modest maiden. why does he have such double standards?