Art of conversation

I had a surprise visitor last week.  A vial of French perfume and a miniature model of the Eiffel Tower was the surprise hamper that came with the surprise visit. This was not all my friend had more up her sleeve.

 Two hours of non-stop babble of her recent visit to Paris resonated all around my living room. The monologue only ended as she left home. Her enthusiasm to talk about her vacation to the fashion capital of the world made me contemplate on some of the practices of the fine art of conversation.     A gentleman, with a good sense of humour once said to me, “I have a sure-fire line to get a conversation going with the person next to me at a dinner party.  I simply look at whatever piece of jewellery a woman is wearing and ask her to tell me the story of how she got it.  That one story invariably keeps the whole evening going.” Women maybe the more loquacious breed of the human race, but I must confess I know several men who can get carried away too in conversation. Such topics as career, job and professional experiences bring out the effusive nature in them that makes them jabber in a monologue.  

“Eagerness to talk and impress others is so high these days that people who do not have much to say, think themselves to be inferior,” noted, a counsellor I know. Though being eloquent is the hall mark of a good speaker, “The real art of conversation,” says, Dorothy Nevell, an English writer, “is not only to say the right thing in the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”  This corroborates the idea of the experts in the field who talk about two kinds of people who don’t say much: those who are quiet and those who talk a lot! The middle path obviously is the recommended optimal point. Indeed a good conversationalist is not the one who remembers what was said, but says what someone wants to remember!

The best story in the art of speech came to me recently in a forwarded e-mail. It was about a hungry mountain lion that came out of the hills. It attacked the first bull that came its way and killed it. Feasting on its kill, the lion paused from time to time and roared aloud in triumph. A hunter in the area heard the commotion, found the lion and shot him dead. As the lion breathed its last the hunter said in triumph, “When you’re full of bull, keep your mouth shut!”