Fred narrated a real-life incident to me this morning and asked me to write about it in my blog. This post, hence, is special as this is first time my blog will be studded with an on-demand post :-).

So, here is the story:

Fred and Kamat have been cronies since their college days. Kamat lives with his father( Babu) and elder Sister (Sujata).

Babu is 90 years old and ever since his retirement has been home with a permanent ennui. Babu has been a thorough professional who worked with some of best multinationals and held various celebrated positions. Life after retirement for anyone is not easy and for someone like Babu it had to be exacting. For Babu, the world was a smaller place for not the right reasons. His universe had shrunk to a house with more things and less people. Gradually he settled in his new “TV-Books-Bed-anybody out there?” life and found ways to deal with it and embrace it.

Recently, Fred went to see Kamat. While Fred and Kamat were chatting in the living room, Babu happened to pass by. Fred paused the conversation and went up to Babu to greet him. Babu reciprocated with all the warmth, shook his hand and sat beside him. The pleasantries lead to Babu narrating some old events from his working days, personal life and so on.

The old age amongst many things has caused Babu a new mannerism which is of repeating himself and a dysfunction, which is of not being able to hear properly. This establishes a criterion for the other person to being considerate and patient inorder to continue the conversation. Fred fortunately fulfills both the criteria’s, which explains why the conversation lasted over an hour.

Babu was talking his heart out and Fred was only acknowledging and appreciating Babu’s anecdotes with a few remarks. Babu spoke about various things, some of which, even Kamat did not know of. Sujata who joined the tete-a-tete session later, was equally astonished on the fact that her father had not told few of the stories to his own children. Fred kept acknowledging and at times both Kamat and Fred moderated the session. All four of them thoroughly enjoyed the time.

Kamat thanked Fred for enabling Babu to talk and said, “You have a gift of gab and getting people to talk”. Fred replied, “It may appear as though there was a dialogue but you know that I hardly spoke. I don’t know how Babu opened up.”

While Fred was leaving, Babu went up to him, looked at him through the wet eyes, gave him a smile that accentuated the wrinkles of his face and said in a tender tone, “You listened. Thank you for listening. ”

Source: http://written-to-write.blogspot.com/2009/06/thank-you-for-listening.html