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Photo: Mohammed Yousuf

Magic mantra Small talk can turn strangers into lasting friends

A nervous speaker was introduced after dinner. He approached the microphone and began haltingly: “My f-friends, when I arrived h-here this evening only God and I knew what I was going to say. Now only God knows.”

Every speaker worth his audience faces the nerves at times. “A one-to-one or one-to-many is not always hunky-dory,” says Gangadhar, who specializes in the nuances of the art of conversation. “Unless you connect with the listener/s first and maintain that during the whole conversation, you could as well go digging a hole in your backyard and filling it up, again and again.” The best way to connect with others is through ‘small talk.’ Small talk is an exchange of pleasantries on social occasions.

An informal, casual chitchat will do wonders. It can scope out various relationships, reduce emotional distances and prepare a fertile ground for further connection.

For Jagan, an engineering grad, social awkwardness is the problem. “When I asked my friend out for the first time and was trying a conversation, I fidgeted with my fingers, my legs were shaking with tension, and no words would come out. I was a complete wreck.” Fortunately, small talk helped him negotiate the difficult moments. By chatting about music and movies, “I put my friend and myself at ease. Now, I can talk about anything without any awkwardness.”

“As part of oral communication, I advise my students to have small talk before launching oneself into an issue,” says Shankar, a lecturer in English who is working on communicative language acquisition. Small talk can be about many things: about work, family, hobbies or music and movies.

About hobbies you can start off with things like, what kind of music one likes to listen or what kind of movies one watches. About work, “what do you do, how interesting it is, what are one’s family members doing?”

The aim is ‘to establish a common ground, an emotional rapport, to get the conversation going and interesting.’

Genuine interest in others can lead to wonderful things in life. “Culture spreads through conversation. A heart-to-heart talk or relationships happen over a cup of coffee. You immediately connect with somebody,” points out Rangarajan, 60.

Even if you know you are going to have an argy-bargy or desperate to head-butt someone on an issue, ‘it’s better to start off with a small talk,’ so the damn affair won’t rankle afterwards. Small talk is ‘a great social lubricant.’ In this sense, icebreakers do more than break the ice; they thaw out hardened positions, bring each other closer to a mutual understanding. You don’t skate on cobblestones, do you?” asks Tarun, a PR manager.

Informal conviviality connects better than straightjacketed formality. Whether you are talking about the weather, about the current events, at the office, at a social event or any other occasion, informal talk pays many social dividends. “It’s a culture thing,” says Sudheer, an MNC executive, adding: “In U.S, stiff upper-lip formality can be interpreted as being unfriendly.” Some companies are formal and conservative, where all decisions are made in boardrooms. But, now you see twenty-somethings start companies where communication is highly informal. And liberating. They brainstorm big things under a tree with a coffee mug in their hands.

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