Excuse me while I bore you

Bore, noun. A person who talks when you wish him to listen. Ambrose Bierce, short story writer.

One of the most common words we come across in our daily conversation is the noun bore. It can also double-up as a verb. The word has several meanings, but in the sense in which I am referring to it, a bore is a person who is constantly nattering away about something nobody is particularly interested in, refuses to take a broad hint to cease and desist, and when someone else attempts to change the subject, bashes on regardless. Ironically, this kind of bore actually thinks he is holding his audience spellbound and must, on no account, stop short of expending all his energies on his endless droning. A regular windbag. A chap who would rather talk than listen.

A boring person is such a regular feature in our lives that I never saw fit to check how our famed digital dictionaries defined a bore. And you know what, the dictionaries provided me with all kinds of bores – a hole made with the help of tools, tidal bores that cause death and devastation, a hollow part inside a gun barrel – and so on. Any reference to a chap who sits back after a hearty meal, lights up a cigarette and sets the conversational ball rolling with a ‘Did I ever tell you about the time I went whale hunting in Iceland? I did? Well, you can’t have remembered all the riveting details, so let me refresh you,’ was not immediately discernible during my online searches. One had to plough through several more heads under ‘bore’ before hitting pay dirt.

All of which I found rather strange, as I am more apt to come across human bores on a daily basis, than the subject of borewells. Mind you, with the water situation being what it is in the world these days, mindless digging of borewells frequently finds a mention in our daily newspapers. For the purposes of this particular essay, the subject pertaining to all kinds of other bores will necessarily have to take a back seat to our friend, the human bore, who can put us to sleep within two minutes into his long-winded soliloquy. I have attempted to classify bores into various categories and see where it takes us. I have employed the male pronoun while discussing our boring protagonist. This is as much to preclude the need to tediously add an ‘or she’ in parenthesis as it is to make a point that somehow, the male of the species appears to be deadlier at the fine art of boring our pants off than the female. This is not to suggest that the distaff side cannot make you go cross-eyed with their conversation, given half a chance. It’s just that I don’t come across that many bores among the gentler sex.

With those few words, nearly 450 of them, I should dive headlong into the main subject lest I run the risk of becoming soporific myself. My classification of bores does not bear any specific logical sequence to it. It is more a top-of-the-mind exercise. Spontaneity is the watchword. You, dear reader, will be in a position to add many more types of bores based on your own personal experience. That said, here goes nothing.

The Oldest Member. If you are a fan of P.G. Wodehouse’s collected works, I applaud your good taste. If you are not, you are more to be pitied than censured. In a memorable series of golfing stories, where romance and skulduggery on the greens co-exist harmoniously, there is this delightful character, The Oldest Member. The capital letters denote his nomenclature as his actual name is never revealed. The Oldest Member of the club, sipping his brandy and soda, is long retired from his active playing days. Now in his dotage, he buttonholes any young golfer who happens to be passing, sits him down, and proceeds to torture him with long-winded golfing tales (involving young love) from way back when. Shades of The Ancient Mariner. Till his young victim, unable to escape, goes blue in the face. His fate is sealed. In this case, the master craftsman Wodehouse, paints the boring senior citizen in such a way as to have the reader in splits. To convey boredom without creating it. Therein lies the art.

The Retired Veteran. In India, we are not without a surfeit of our own version of The Oldest Member. You should particularly look sharp to avoid people ambling in the park with a walking stick who might have retired from the Railways or some public sector behemoth. Even private sector veterans can be a handful. My father-in-law was a railway veteran, lived to a 102 before punching in his ticket, and never tired of ‘regaling’ us with stories of how he would give the short shrift to anyone who even smelt of being corrupt and how senior government ministers would shiftily creep by whenever they passed his ‘chamber.’ The fact that these tales were being told for the umpteenth time had no bearing on his eagerness to unburden his soul. A sense of overweening self-importance is virtually a sine qua non if you wish to be a reputed bore. ‘In the good, old days’ was the storm warning!

 My old man, also now sleeping with the fishes, was a much-respected banker. Not an evening passed when, on returning home, he would not impale my long-suffering mother with heroic and harrowing (for her) tales of how he told his boss off for speaking to him in a somewhat peremptory manner, and how his boss slunk off, tail between his legs. And he would do this every other day. We kids found it amusing. We even saw him as some kind of knight in shining armour. My mother had given up the ghost.

The Dreamer. Celebrated English essayist and parodist, Sir Max Beerbohm hit the nail on the head when he said, ‘People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table.’ We all have dreams; good dreams, bad dreams, but there is this insatiable urge to narrate it to the first person you meet after you wake up, in case you forget the salient details later, which is often the way with dreams. Which means the first target could be your wife. Then again, the good wife, having been a victim of your Freudian recollections many times, may have been a bit shirty with your crack-of-dawn drawl. Worse still, she may have also had dreams of her own, requiring instant regurgitation. It’s a stand-off. You are stumped. Which then means some office colleague or long-lost friend could be the unfortunate recipient. ‘I was trapped in a dank cave in a remote forest, the grizzly bear was bearing down on me, and as he leaped, I woke up screaming, in a cold sweat. What can it possibly mean?’ That you are going to lose a lot of money on the bourses? It would have been preferable to have dreamt of a raging bull, about to gore you in a China shop. Figure that one out.

The Cricket Bore. In India, one can hardly hurl a stone without beaning a cricket bore. I do not exclude myself from this dubious tribe. Everyone is an expert on the game. ‘Why did the chump choose to field after winning the toss? You know what Boycott used to say? Win the toss and bat first. If you are unsure, think about it and bat first.’ That is the critical cricket bore. How about the boring cricket raconteur? Again, like The Oldest Member of golfing fame, he is in a class by himself. My bureaucrat uncle’s veteran cook in Delhi tortured me on a weekly basis with his, ‘You should have seen Vinoo Mankad. He would entice the batsman out of his crease, ever so slowly, ball by ball, inch by inch. Next thing you know, the bails are off and it’s bye-bye, blackbird! Yes, yes, Bedi was good, but not like Vinoo. What, Vinoo cheated? What rubbish! Ah, you mean whipping off the bails when the non-striker backed up too far? That is perfectly fair. In fact, Vinoo has been immortalised by Wisden as the term “Mankading” a batsman testifies.’ All in chaste Tamil! And so, the long, dreary, boring night wore on with more such tales.

The Retd. Army Major Type. Head for the hills, if you run into him. He will kill you with his heroic tales of valour in the trenches and how he once strangled a Chinese soldier with his bare hands on the Galwan LAC. After the third large whisky, it will be four Chinese and two Pakis demolished with his last remaining bullet. Avoid this man like the plague, at all costs.

The Public Speaker. I have to end this diatribe on bores with this old favourite. There is a handful of public speakers who can enthral, entertain and hold our interest. I exclude politicians for the obvious reason that nobody actually listens to what they are saying. However, in more cloistered circles, we can come across some amazing bores. Beware of the fellow who starts off by saying, ‘I do not wish to detain you. You must have more pressing engagements.’ A red herring, if ever there was one. Fasten your seatbelts and stay for the long haul. In India, I have often had to face the torture of some sponsor-VIP being asked to ‘say a few words,’ plumb, spang in the middle of a Classical music concert. ‘I don’t know what to say as I do not understand Classical music, but I am humbled by being asked to address you all on the performance. What a wonderful concert this was. The Kalyani elaboration was brilliant. Pardon? Oh, it was Bhairavi! Dear me, sorry about that.’ Beg your pardon, Sir? Concertus interruptus and even the artist is not best pleased.

Celebrated author John Updike once said, ‘A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one-and-a-half times his own weight in other people’s patience.’ For myself, I can tolerate, with much reluctance and up to a point, someone who is offensive, rude and unpleasant in his public utterances. However, to bore your audience to distraction should find him a place in a sub-category among the Seven Deadly Sins.