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The power to say no

Pritish Nandy

02 January 2012, 09:18 PM IST 60

My worst failing is my inability to say No. This year I intend to correct that.

I

will clearly and unequivocally say No when I want to. Not a Maybe or a Perhaps;

a

straight, categorical No.

For people like me its not easy. We were brought up being told that No is

impolite, rude, and politically incorrect. There are nicer ways to turn down a

request. You can gently fob it off. Or procrastinate. Or do what my friend

Husain, the painter, always did. He said Yes to everything and promptly

disappeared. Poof! People have waited for him to inaugurate an event in London

while he went off to New York for a party. No, Husain never allowed a

commitment, any commitment to burden him. He happily failed each, knowing fully

that he will be forgiven for his indiscretions. He blamed it on his poor memory.

But memory had nothing to do with it. Insouciance did.

My friend was identical. He did hundreds of cartoons for me when I was

editor, but never on time. Give a deadline and you could be sure he will

miss it. He completed every assignment but in his own time. I remember he once

came to me with a cartoon so late that I had forgotten what it was for. But no,

he never said No. He was always polite, always proper and agreed to any deadline

I set him because he knew he would not have to keep to it. We decided to do a

book together, of naughty limericks, largely based on Indian politics. I waited

three years for him to complete the drawings. By the time they were ready, I had

lost the manuscript. (We didnt have computers in those days and typescripts were

easy to lose.)

I smoked my first cigarette at 7 because I couldnt say No. I downed my first

whisky at 9, smoked grass at 11, all because I couldnt say No. Luckily I found

it all quite boring and so, by the time I was 16, it was all over and I was

ready

to take on life on my own terms. Minor addictions have never distracted me

since.

I listen to Vivaldi, read Dylan , try to figure out why Damien Hirst is

such a vastly over rated artist. I can spend all day listening to Mallikarjun

Mansur and marvelling at his genius if only I can say No to a million silly,

irrelevant commitments I pick up, for people I barely know.

My father died because he couldnt say No to a doctor, a family friend in

Jabalpur who convinced him that prostrate surgery was the easiest thing on

earth,

and he could do it in his own nursing home. By the time I heard of it and rushed

there, he was already in a coma from which he never recovered. We finally pulled

the plug on him. My mother lost our family home in Kolkata because she couldnt

say No to her landlord, who requested her to give up her decades old tenancy

because his family had grown, needed more space. Even before she packed up her

meagre belongings and came to me here, the landlord had sold off the house. Yes.

Life makes suckers of us all. Especially those prone to saying Yes.

I was reading the cover story in a news magazine recently which argued that the

most important thing you can tell your doctor is No. Most people suffer because

they say Yes and get lumped with medication they dont need, tests that are not

necessary, and surgeries they could have done without. This is true at the

dinner

table as well, or in a restaurant. The more often you say No to the lip smacking

food there, the better your health will be. The day we can say No to all the

candidates when voting, the quality of our politicians will improve.

Life is a honey trap. Everyones waiting for you to say Yes. The moment you do,

you are entrapped by absolute, arrant nonsense, breathtakingly packaged,

aggressively promoted, seductively laid out in front of you, and completely

irrelevant to your life or well being. The wise man says No. The fool succumbs.

2012 is my year to say No. An emphatic, easy No. Like Bana told his handler

in the last scene of Spielbergs masterpiece, Munich. If a patriot who risked his

life hunting down terrorists can say that, so can you and I.

manish kothari