They Knew It

I hear a lot. 'Are you feeling lonely?' 'Are you feeling sad, that you are so far away from your daughter and wife?' Or the latest, 'Do you miss them?' I really do not know how to response. I wish the questioners did not know the answers already. But they know the answers, sometimes better than me; even then they do not hesitate to ask.

May be they hunt a pinch of sorrow on my face or search for a drop of pain from my eyes. May be they want to converse just as fellow humans are supposed to do, but I can't give them what they want. I smile to them. A tweak on my lips. Mysterious kind. May have different interpretations, based on the question. I don’t know what they interpret, but they seem to be satisfied at the end.

And I get it. Sometimes a smile or mysterious silence is the best response to a difficult question, or a question of known answer. Most of the questioners question not to listen, but to start a conversation or to prove that they are enough experienced to give a proper advice. Sometimes they just want to tell themselves 'I knew it'. And you think they care for your answer!

I remember my answer to one of my relatives and her nonchalant response. When I told her that I really don't miss my daughter or wife, as I am used to it, she casually remarked, 'ok' and then started a story of her, how she was missed by her husband, when he went for a foreign tour for a week. I listened aptly, and then asked more of her experiences. Her eyes were glowing with happiness, though I happened to know that only yesterday there was a bitter fight between them.

And I know a well-respected person too, close to my father, who answers his own questions, as if he knows his questions are unanswerable by poor others. One question, then a pause of one second, and then the answer. Everybody knows the drill. One day he asked me, do I enjoy being alone! And before he answered, I put as much as surprise in my voice, and asked, 'you don’t know that already?' He obviously was upset for a few days, as his usual pause was longer than one second, before returning to normalcy.

Though most of my questioners are not that extreme, but I know they are just happy with my smile or a weird tweak on lips. They are intelligent, experienced and pragmatic. They deserve to tell themselves, 'I knew it'.