ON THAT NOTE

Suresh Menon is a writer based in India. In his youth he set out to change the world but later decided to leave it as it is.

Our columnist Suresh Menon is not sure when he started to enjoy poking his nose in other people’s business. But it’s great fun, he says. He even made it his career!

Iam not sure when I changed from being a minder of my own business to a nose-poker into other people’s. The change was gradual, I think. “Oh I’ve read that book,” I leaned over and told a fellow-traveller on a flight once, “You will enjoy it. The surprise is that the nephew is the murderer.”

I meant well. Take an interest in other people’s interests, the book had advised. Apparently that was the route to life-long friendships. As a boy, I was shy and diffident, sometimes turning a shade of red when anyone spoke to me. I kept to myself, spoke only when spoken to and behaved as if no one else existed. Or needed to.

And then an uncle presented me a book on how to make friends, influence people and make lots of money, or something like that. It affected my life in several ways. I have hated self-help books ever since, I became insufferable with my over-friendliness, and I avoided my uncle for the rest of his life.

Also, people began asking me a different set of questions. Instead of “Which school do you go to?” or “Do you play cricket?”, the standard questions children were asked those days, most people, startled by my over-keenness to know about their lives asked, “Why don’t you mind your own business?” or “Why don’t you go and boil your head?” These, in the friendliest of tones, so they had obviously read another self-help book which advised people about how to react to those who had read my book.

Years later, I realised that perhaps that is why I became a journalist, to sort of give validity to my constant nose-poking into other people’s business. What’s your name? What do you think of this or that? When did you first notice it happening? How long has this been going on?

The questions were all asked in the service of a higher cause: The public’s right to know. I was merely the medium, and media were everywhere, pushing mikes into the faces of marathon winners, asking them how they felt, or asking a president who had just been voted out of office if he had any regrets.

My uncle, meanwhile, having set me on a course to change my life, retired, and changed his life too, selling snuff, that smokeless tobacco people inhaled. Terrible stuff, I thought, making a generation of snuff takers smell like that part of a forest that never gets fresh air.

After having set me on the path to putting my nose into other people’s business, he went the other way, putting his business into other people’s noses. But he alone has escaped my quest for personal answers.

An uncle presented me a book on how to make friends and make lots of money... I have hated selfhelp books ever since...