Fault finders!

Fault finders

This is about a cousin of mine by name Narasimhan. The family called him Nachu, not affectionately but for a reason. They called him so because Nachu in Tamil meant lethal poison and that was what he kept shooting people with all the time. If you can visualise an aborigine from Amazon armed with sharp arrows dipped in hemlock poison, that would be Nachu. The only difference was that Nachu was not armed with a bow and arrow but he used his tongue instead. Of course, Nachu kicked the bucket a decade back with such disdain as if the whole world was unworthy of his inhabitation and people close to him tell me that had there been an item in the Olympics for kicking the bucket with disdain, India would have won a Gold through him!

I did not have many encounters with him and the few that I had were enough to leave me in shambles! I’ll just narrate one incident and you’ll get the gist. It was a wedding of a relative at Bangalore. I was sitting in the wedding hall after a typically sumptuous wedding breakfast. I was about to doze off under the weight of that breakfast, when I observed Nachu walking in. I shot up from my seat and rushed to greet him forgetting all the cautions that I had received from my family members about how to tackle him. I grinned broadly and casually asked him why he was late. For the next thirty minutes, he was all fire and brimstone. He told me that God had given him enough and that he had no need to rely on free meals to survive unlike others, obviously in direct reference to me. He ridiculed the habit of some (again referring to me indirectly) collecting invitations for functions so that the need to light up a stove at home could be minimal! He wondered whether there was any technical jargon for collecting invitations like numismatics for coins and philately for stamps! When he left me to myself after what seemed an eternity (though my watch showed it as only 29 minutes), I was virtually like a distant cousin of a caterpillar crawling on as many legs as possible to the nearest seat!

For the next thirty minutes, I was consumed by self pity. I was appalled by the unfairness of his diatribe against me in response to a very innocuous question that I asked. In retrospect, I guess that some people are made that way. They have to find fault with everything that they come across. They just do not have a discerning outlook. They go about with a magnifying glass like Sherlock Holmes or Hercule` Poirot looking for clues left by criminals. They are like sniffer dogs who are more at home looking for cocaine than a juicy piece of bone.

Have you ever observed how the fault finders of the world go about their job? A few years ago, Balu Mahandra, the renowned movie maker produced a TV serial on some famous short stories tiled ‘Kadhai Neram’ (Story Time). One story was about a little girl who was quite strong in Maths. Her tutor at home was her own grandpa who was considerably proud of his grand daughter. One day, she walked home a bit morose because she had missed a centum by one mark .The curious grandpa perused her answer sheet and found all the answers to be correct. The question in which she got one mark less was that if an apple cost Rs.9, how much five apples would cost? If I say Rs.45, you would readily endorse it as correct. We would shake hands on it and perhaps adjourn to the nearest oasis to celebrate. But if you are a faultfinder, you will ask me how I arrived at my answer. Suppose I were to tell you that I arrived at the answer thus:
9 x 5 = 45. You will purse your lips and nod your head from left to right. You will further say that the answer is wrong because the question was not how much nine apples would cost if each of them was priced at Rs 5 but vice versa. The answer should have been, therefore, 5 x 9 = 45! This was what happened to that poor girl with her teacher taking such a dim view. The furious grandpa took the issue up to the Director of Education but to his dismay, everyone was supportive of the teacher! Do you see what I am driving at? The fault finders can find fault with almost everything under the sun.

Members of the opposition parties in a parliamentary democracy take a special training in fault finding. They live under the constant fear that if they let go of an opportunity to find fault, they may lose their job. So they do not take any chance there and do not wait for an opportunity. Instead they find fault with anything and everything and feel much safer that way! On the contrary, reviewers of various items like a music programme, films, books and all such reviewable things find fault with whatever they review more to show off their own wisdom (which otherwise may go unnoticed!) than for any other purpose. An octogenarian music critic from Delhi who used to visit Chennai during every music season was a classic example of this category!

But having said all this, we must concede that the fault finders are more resourceful than complaisant people like us. Take my cousin Nachu for example. He would be at your throat even if you asked him a simple question like if it was likely to rain!

 

My dear Mol
The story of your uncle only reinforces my belief that there will be a Nachu in every family and in every community. Over a period of time, I have learnt to look at the pathetically humourous side of their behaviour! Some of their tantrums evoke a lot of fun and frolic within me and it will be no exaggeration if I say that I have started enjoying the company of these guys!
Have you seen the movie 'Hello Dolly' starring Walter Mathau and Barbara Streisand? If you haven't, try and get a CD and you'll know how people with a great sense of humour and vivacity can find even grumblers like Walter Mathau really adorable!
And Mole, that was a superfast FB! Looks as if you had already in mind what was I going to write about and were ready with a FB!
Thank you for being such a great motivator!
Sri

 

Dear Santosh
Thanks a lot for coming in. As the newest rage in IL, I always have a Red Carpet to roll out for you!
Mamta is a classic example. She is one of our most garrulous politicians of the country! This is happening right now in Tamilnadu too. One of the coalition parties of the Government severed its connections with the ruling party about a month back. They are now cricising everything that the Government is doing which was quite acceptable to them for the last four years.
You are quite right about the fault finders' self-assessment. They can do nothing wrong!
Sri

 

Dear LS
So you too have a Nachu in the family! I think that it is better that we develop an attitude like The Brook of Tennyson-
Nachus may come and Nachus may go
But I go on for ever!

The fault finders also enhance our comfort level because they concentrate only on pointing out our trivial mistakes that leaves us with a comfortable feeling that we are quite OK!

That story of BM had an ending that stirred our heart with the girl's dad telling the grandfather that he should let the girl child submit to the conditions of the society and expressing his fear that such support might eventually make her a rebel. It's a good point to be debated in IL!
Sri

 

Dear Shanthi
Chithragupt is the greatest fault finder of the Universe mythologically but then it is his job. He does his job without any bias and very objectively. He does not fabricate faults to be attributed to his subjects. On the contrary, the social fault finders are a unhappy lot because they think that they form a minority in this world as perfectionists without even an iota of fault. If at all they have a fault, it can at best be described in the words of Oscar Wilde-
"Experience is the name everyone gives to their own mistakes."

It is like the famous Tamil saying, 'If the MIL breaks it, it is a mud pot but if the same is broken by the dil, it is a golden pot!'

Experience has taught me to treat these fault finders as the fillers who come on stage between two scenes with some jokes. No one bothers even to mention them while reviewing the play!
Sri