Those looking for freebies need not despair. One thing that is available gratis is ‘advice’. Be it on the road while driving a vehicle, from a fellow patient at the clinic, while at the retail outlet purchasing the latest gizmo, when shopping for a big family event, even for something as trivial as the matching colours of clothes that one wears to the accessories that would go well with it ... Whatever the matter at hand, there’s always someone zealously overeager to course-correct your life.
“This is how you should have done it,” a friend or a relative or even a passerby will happily offer, if they notice even the slightest weakness in whatever skill or lack thereof one may suffer from. Some will just stare you down with that “Oh, I told you so” look. Once on a public transport bus in the hinterland, a overcautious man seated behind said, “Don’t put your arm outside the window.” I was about to retort that just half-an-inch of my elbow was accidentally jutting out and it didn’t even match the protrusion of the rear-view mirror of the vehicle, but kept mum given the futility of it. “You should have kept your luggage on just one side of the seats as it affects all others,” a burly man insisted when I was on a train to Hyderabad years ago. Just so he could keep his extended family’s baggage everywhere, including on the seats.
“If you take this circuitous route, you will be delayed, go that way, you will reach sooner,” a kind traffic cop once told me, pointing in a confoundingly general direction while trying to help me avoid a particularly scary bottleneck. By design or his ignorance, the meandering route he proposed turned out to be a cul-de-sac.
Having been caught in a legal tussle a few years ago, I came across good counsel and the inevitable unsound guidance. But, that’s life, the counsel condescendingly told me. More so if you are at the receiving end. The ‘counsellors’ emerged the winners, if you are wondering what happened finally.
Then there are the medicos. This no one can afford to neglect. And they don’t beat about the bush. Just terse one-liners, either written or spoken, and bingo you are up and running — sometimes literally. An older cousin used to tutor me that oh-so-tough Maths at home during my school days and would offer much advice on what needs to be done with this and that to succeed in life. So much so that we would end up discussing everything except Maths. That he is a rather successful techie now in America is just beside the point.
Having said that, even if every bid to best the odds fails miserably, there’s always some genial soul waiting to offer advice.
Email: anand1910@gmail.com