Benjamin Franklin aptly stated, mastering communication is not just saying the right thing but also resisting the temptation to say the wrong thing

Recently out for my morning walk I overheard a walker talking to another co-walker, “We don’t know what the peoples wants...”

I have no interest in commenting on the grammar of the sentence – after all the two parties involved in the communication were comfortable with their conversation.

I had shifted to an English medium school only after I had reached class 9. It was not a pleasant experience for me. The school was in Delhi, and to my unsophisticated self, coming from small town India, I felt as alienated amongst those English speaking smart boys and girls, as a Martian might feel on first visit to Earth.

Only three years later, I was to make an irritated comment to a friend, “Stop that clownship!” My inadequate knowledge of the universal language almost turned me into an introvert.

It was only after I had started my professional journey in the railways, that too as a Hindi speaking north Indian, posted in Bengal, heading a maintenance shed of 1000+ staff, I realised and then resolved the difficulties faced in communicating with a predominantly Bangla speaking workforce. It was a mutual understanding. We would be talking to each other in our respective mother tongues, yet understanding each other more through non-verbal communication of hand and eye movement or body language.

By now I had gained enough confidence and felt slightly more comfortable during my first study tour to Japan. In transit, at Bangkok airport, I approached the girl at a sandwich kiosk in my perfect Queens English. The girl was nonplussed, “Oui. Please speak slowly. I can’t understand you.”

A few weeks later, a co-participant from Sri Lanka on the same study tour, was to further deflate my ego, “Sanjay, your English is atrocious.”

I continued to improve my English in the following years. Till I started meeting professionals from different nationalities, not speaking English as a first language. They were comfortable in their broken English and did not shy away from seeking help from colleagues, if required, for the right English word.

But then a communication between two people, about something they want to convey, can sometimes have, hilarious at best and disastrous at worst, consequences.

More recently, addressing a group of wide-eyed university students, I was to tell them, “Communication is the key. Never break a communication – write a letter, call, send an email, communicate on tinder...”

This caused much hilarity in the auditorium, in which even I participated whole-heartedly. It was only later, as I checked the net, I realised that Tinder is a dating site, and not expected to be indulged in for the kind of communication that I was talking about.

Like another time recently, a friend sent her driver for me to sign a few cheques. The security guard understood his intent of visit for ‘cheque signing’ to be his name ‘Cheek Singh'. I would still stay, communication is the key, whatever verbal and/or non-verbal means you employ, in whichever language. I couldn’t agree more with Benjamin Franklin, “Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”

(The author is an electrical engineer with the Indian Railways and conducts classes in creative writing; views are personal)