Very long ago I had shared a post through one of my social
media accounts – “there is Ethos, Pathos & Logos, and then there is Bakar.”
During one of my recent online hop & read session (where you start reading something, and
another link on the same page catches your fancy, so you jump to the new link,
even if it’s a completely new topic), I again stumbled upon Aristotle’s
Rhetoric. And my thoughts went rushing back to this post.
So let me first start with the introduction. No, no. I
absolutely don’t mean to introduce you to Aristotle. I was only referring to
the lesser mortal “Bakar”. Again, people from northern part of the country
don’t need any introduction. Folks from the eastern states may identify more
closely with ‘Adda’. Some of you may remember having heard or used the word
bak***** (beep) during your student
life, or maybe even after. And for people who have not been in either of the
above categories, it is difficult to explain the real meaning of the word. Even
more so the feel of it. Some of the online sources give it a rather demeaning
explanation of ‘useless, baseless gossip’. I object. It has a greater and a
deeper meaning & a larger purpose. And maybe you should continue reading to
discover it. For those who already know what it means, hopefully you’ll enjoy reading
it as much as I am enjoying writing it.
For the sake of consistency, I will stick to the name Bakar.
For me Bakar is an all encompassing term where you can
include along with Aristotle’s rhetoric & dialectic, other more harsher and
severe forms of debates and arguments, even fights. Wit & humour are also oft used skills. Simply stated one can use
one or more of these tools to win an argument during a Bakar session. One can
cross and criss-cross the boundaries of logic and truth, sometimes even decency,
and repeatedly, for the sake of the argument. It is also a source of
information as each participant puts forward his share of the knowledge to
support or oppose the topic. And the best part is, whichever way the Bakar
session may end, whoever may win, most of the time (and I say most because God likes to create exceptions for everything to
prove his might) the participants leave with a smile, and gladly come back
for the next round.
And I have a personal attachment to this phenomenon since some
of these Bakar sessions have left deep marks on my memory and I guess even on ‘me’.
For lack of any other prioritization criteria, I will stick to chronological
order.
During student life, the most common and favorite Bakar
sessions revolve around campus romances and break-ups. During one such Bakar
session, a friend was boasting on being able to correctly predict the future of
some of the relationships. This got the group excited, and we actually sat down
with pen and paper, assigning ranking and probabilities of success for each pair. We even wrote down their strengths and weaknesses, and assigned
weights to these, hence lending credibility to the discussion. It soon turned
into a heated debate, with some of us trying to prove our superior understanding
of human relations. We even tried deriving some vague formula for a successful
relationship, based on the weighted average of the do’s & don’ts. The
discussion, which touched a weak spot in the young hearts of early twenties,
lasted a couple of long hours. Though none of us bothered to check our results
with real life data, the memory of that day remained with me. Today when I look
back, I feel that a seminar by any trained relationship counselor may not create
an effect as that session of Bakar did.
Coming on to the office space, the canteen, break-out zones
and smoking zones play as important a role in your career as your work-station. These
are the windows of establishing connects, discovering opportunities, breeding
ideas and sometimes even formulating policies. But dear friend, do remember to
keep your eyes and ears open, and volume low. I happen to share one such coffee
table discussion with the team HR. The conversation drifted towards the
upcoming team carnival. I had not liked the invitation mail sent out, and openly
stated so. Probably my coffee was a bit too strong that day, as I continued to
debate how the event can be better organized, how to encourage employee
participation and how such events can be used as a powerful tool to enhance
employee satisfaction. The very next day my VP called me to his cabin, and suggested
(you can imagine what a super-boss’s suggestion
mean) if I could be a part of the employee engagement team, in addition to
my existing responsibilities. Apparently the HR had shared some of my ideas
with him. For me it turned out into an opportunity of establishing some key
contacts, some additional work and loads of fun. But you can very well imagine
how this could have flipped.
The above mentioned role, along with above stated benefits,
presented many more opportunities for Bakar. During an office picnic, another
round of Bakar was in progress. Some people joined, some moved away, and in the
end only four of us were left. As night continued, our conversations became
more and more animated and hilarious. Our repartees and banter completely
ignored the boundaries of hierarchy and designations. And then the unexpected
happened. Just when we were about to retire for the day, one of the guys knelt
on his knees and proposed the other girl. Initially the two eye-witnesses, one
being me, were as shocked as the dumbfounded girl standing there. There was a
minute of complete silence. And then two eye-witnesses were rolling on floor
laughing. But I think the other two took this a little more seriously, and
now have been married for almost seven years.
Another form of Bakar is free advice. Even if we are
struggling to sail through our day-to-day challenges, we take the effort of
solving other people’s problems. And even in absence of any acknowledgement, we
continue doing it believing it to be our responsibility towards welfare of
humanity. I have also, in all humbleness shared my simple solutions to people’s
complex issues. But it is since the third trimester of pregnancy, that I have
received more advice than is even possible for a computer to retain. All senior
members of the fraternity (read mothers
with kids elder to my daughter), share their experiences. From shopping
list, to feeding and sleeping pattern, child’s growth and learning, my own diet
programs and health-care, almost all imaginable topics are covered.
Moving on to the home front, almost all of my previous blogs
and views therein, which you may have read (if
you haven’t, just complete this and then look up the archives), were formed
during the endless Bakar sessions I have shared with my favorite Bakar partner,
my better half. Sometimes just two of us, and at others with group of friends
and family, we have had endless discussions and debates on life. Life, being my
favorite topic of Bakar. These Bakar sessions involve our principles (ethos),
our emotions (pathos), our thinking and experiences (logos), and
the agreements and disagreements (rhetoric & dialectic), and
shape us into what we are.
Now, when I sit and turn the pages of my memoires, this
seemingly innocuous category of conversations, aimed primarily at
entertainment, to my mind is neither baseless nor useless. It is during some of
these conversations, that the true character of an individual comes out. Other
than being a great source of bonding, it is also an excellent source of
information. Most of the people working in the field of sales & marketing,
swear by it. Even if we ignore all of the above, as long as it provides us with
a few hearty laughs, couple of giggles, and a smile to walk away with, I think
it is worth indulging in.
So if you think you love your Bakar as much as I do, please
join me for a session, whenever you have some free time. Or better still invite
me over. But if the distances of time and space separate us, then lets use this
platform to catch up. Till the time we get a chance to meet again.
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