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That Feeling When by Nikhil Taneja: Thank God for the small talk
It’s this that keeps us from turning into dreary office bots and turns our workplaces into social exchange hubs
The last time I was at office, a couple of weeks before the first lockdown, I had made the split-second decision for my team to move to a work-from-home set-up until the worst of the pandemic was over. It was only meant to be a stop-gap arrangement (lol) until we were back at our workplace decorated with priceless memories and precious memorabilia from the first year of my youth media start-up. There were no goodbyes, no pictures, no eulogies, and no hugs (thanks, social distancing). Just words of (pre)caution, terms of endearment, best of wishes, and lots of ‘see you soon’.
It took us two years and a few months before we were back in office again, a month ago. We all lost people, lost opportunities, lost motivations, lost touch, lost hugs, lost well-being, lost routine, and lost two formative years of really living, settling for the gratitude of just being alive.
But one of the things I only realised that we had lost was when I found it again, over the last few weeks, at a chai stall outside our office building: absolutely, completely pointless conversation.
The zoom of life
Of all the things I’ve missed, I wouldn’t have put my money on ‘small talk’ being among the top of my *really* long list. Two years of prancing between back-to-back Zoom meetings, with perfunctory “how are you’s”—asked only to get the obligations done with so everyone can get to the damn point—with the only ‘me time’ or even free time being when the person on the other end is late for the call (thank you to the unpunctual lot!). In vying for the top slot in the race for the Calendar Invites Marathon, all of us lost, because the beginning and end to those marathon meetings—the ‘chit chats’—were robbed from us by the pandemic, and all we were left with was an unceasing, transactional middle, where time somehow both moved really fast and really slow.
Cohesive chatter
Yes, historically, ‘small talk’ was looked down on as an unnecessary ritual that took away from meaningful conversations. But, when you think about it, it’s the water cooler conversation that made friends out of co-workers, it’s the chatter that helped us feel less alone in a workplace of strangers, it’s the banter that turned into lasting memories, it’s the ‘chai sutta’ chat that led to an idea that became a business vertical! It’s the thoroughly pointless small talk that actually kept us from turning into dreary office bots, helping turn our work spaces into social exchange hubs, where so many of us felt seen and heard and involved and alive.
At the chai stall, in the middle of cringe laughing at what the cool kids now call ‘dank jokes’, I looked around at my teammates, with whom I had spent the last 10 minutes talking about the box office debacle of a new release, complimenting someone’s sneakers, discussing another’s diet regime, checking in on the health of someone’s parents, sharing notes on therapy... and I felt whole. This, right there, was the reason we moved back to office, not because we weren’t getting work done or earning revenue, but because we were missing out on these moments of genuine connection that came out of what the cool kids back then called, bakc**di! Thank god for the small talk, really.
Nikhil Taneja is a writer, producer, storyteller, public speaker, feeler of feelings, men’s mental health advocate and co-founder of Yuvaa
That Feeling When is a fortnightly column that offers a relatable take on mental health and emotional well-being.
Catch Nikhil Taneja’s column every fortnight in HT Brunch. It will next appear on June 18, 2022.
From HT Brunch, June 4, 2022
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