Why? Why not?!

Tired of my penchant for so-called debates on TV news channels, my wife asks, “How can you enjoy listening to the cacophony that is presented as debate? They never actually answer any question; they only ask counter-questions.”

Most people evade clear-cut answers to straight questions, and so I asked my wife, “Don’t you always answer with a question when I ask you something?”

“Do I?” she replied. I grab the opportunity to rub in my viewpoint.

“You just proved it. A straight yes or no would have done, but you chose to ask me a question instead. Now do you agree with me?”

“Why must I agree with everything you say on any subject?”

“Why continue in the same vein? Prove me wrong by answering what I ask.”

“But why should I? Why are you so demanding?” And the questioning would have continued but for my son, who dropped in to fetch something from our room.

“You seem to have some serious differences of opinion. What is it this time?” It was his turn to ask a question.

“Why? Who told you we always have differences of opinion?” She asks testily.

“Did I say that?” he asks. She retorts, “Of course you did. What else did you mean when you said ‘this time’?” she insists.

“Aren’t you evading my basic question?” the son asks.

And I cut in with an explanation for my baffled son: “I was just trying to tell your mom that the best way to irritate a person is to ask a question in reply to his question.”

I learned this on my very first day as a cadet at the National Defence Academy from our drill instructor, Subedar Saheb. After dispersing us at the end of an hourlong gruelling drill session, he saw me slouching away and shouted, “Can’t you walk erect like a man? Why are you slouching like a pregnant duck?”

I considered it very unfair to be hauled up after the exhausting drill session and replied, “Saheb, isn’t
the Drill period over now?”

“Oh! So you have a counter question ready? Now, on the double, go around this drill square. You will get the answer,” he ordered.

When I finished the killing-kilometre long run after the heavy-duty drill period and reported back, he asked, “Do you still have a question ready in response to my question?” I was quiet.

He relented and let me go, but not before saying he was waiting for me to ask, “Why not?”

“Have you finished with your silly anecdote?” asked my wife.

“What do you think?” was my retort to which both of them laughed as they asked in unison, “When are YOU going to practice what you preach?”

I knew better than to raise a counter-question.