In our day to day life we come across so many people with different nature and characteristics, some of whom become our friends instantly right from the moment we shake hands and some of whom remain intriguing and mysterious to us even after years of spending time with them and some of whom we dont gel with at all for they being completely opposite to us in nature and mental wavelength.My fate has brought me in touch with a whole gamut of people from extremely bad and selfish to extremely good and generous and here in this article I would like to talk about 8 kinds of people, among others whom I find completely displeasing to my taste.
1) Frustrated Obtrusive kind: There is one person whom I reconnected recently in FB after a gap of over a decade.Calling that person 'friend' will be an overstatement as I hardly ever had communicated with him. We met in coaching class at ninth standard when I used to shy away from him and his peers because they used to bully and tease me over my nickname. Yes I have an embarrassing nickname given affectionately by one of my aunties during those kuchikoo muchiko session when every baby wrapped up in his/her mother's lap gets smothered with affection from all.I was no exception either. However, the nickname, usually restricted within family members, caused me pain during my childhood when disclosed to outsiders for there were insensitive children and teenagers who using it as a weapon used to target me for a ridicule and you know children can be quite cruel when it comes to bullying someone.
Without my knowledge, that embarrassing name got leaked in school and subsequently in coaching classes. Before long, my fellow mates in school and coaching classes started holding me up to ridicule by pronouncing my name in an irritating, ugly fashion. I remember once while returning from coaching class, I bumped into this person concerned and his buddies and they started calling me by my nickname at the top of their voice across the street and mortified in shame and embarrassment, I started running towards my home crying. I was in ninth standard then. I used to hate this person so much that when on the first day of my college I saw him and his buddy hovering infront of our college entrance(dont exactly know why for they didnt study in the same college) and approaching to talk to me, I brushed them aside rudely in feign of total ignorance. After about more than a decade, all of a sudden I got a friendship request from this person on FB and since I have long left all these unpleasant incidents behind me, there was no reason why shouldnot I accept his request. I reasoned that we both were immature and young when such bullying took place, but now all grown up, things could start on a clean slate.
Here I made the blunder. "People dont change". Recently then I had gone into a severe argument on FB with one or two of my friends over Anna Hazare related issue and over some feminist topics and I fought my friends with full strength in support of my views and they with theirs. This person in concern observed that online exchange of words and arguments between me and my friends and wanted to make his presence in my friend list known to me.He started commenting on my even benign status messages in a provocative tone as if making an attempt to get a reaction from me. I ignored him mostly, but when I updated my status with a quotation, collected from one of the websites,this person stepped his foot forward in initiating an argument with me. Although the status message was at all not argument-worthy and never even in my dreams I did imagine that someone might try to instigate me into fighting over such plain quote like "Happiness and content lie in the mind, not in the material gain or possession." I got few "likes" on this status and so I was pretty baffled when this person started attacking me saying that I didnt believe in the quotation myself and that my actions proved that and that I was misguiding people. His behaviour confused me and I didnot exactly realize why this person was attacking me personally. "My actions?"....he hardly knows me on a personal level and how could without knowing me and without being in touch for over a decade, he had the audacity to point his finger at my "actions"? My husband told me not to say anything to him saying that this person was yearning for an attention from me and so he was trying to provoke me into a verbal duel.But I had alreday made a reaction by responding to his comments and so there was no stepping back. My slience would be taken for my weakness and he would again try to harrass me over another status update of mine.I argued with him for a while after which I decided to quit cause I started feeling he intentionally was trying to pick a fight. The next day he put a sarcastic status message on his wall targetting me very diplomatically without mentioning my name, but it was plain and clear that the sarcasm in the message was meant for me.He wrote something like "Some people dont know what they are saying, why they are saying and dont believe in the words themselves and keep misleading innocent people." I preferred to ignore that. But the same day I saw him posting a group snap taken years before infront of the coaching centre when we were all studying in xth std and he blurred my image in that group photo with green sketch pen. It was so obvious that he was again trying to bully me, but all he was causing was "irritation".
When we were studying in the same coaching centre during ninth and tenth std, he had an affair with one of my school mates which I guess didnot last long. Since I was not in touch with either of them after completing tenth, I dont know exactly what transpired between the two or what happened later in his life that he was cherishing not a very pleasant notion about women. Since he presumed that I am still the weaker kind, he might have thought to vent his frustration with women through me. The moment I put up a status like "Happiness and content lie in the mind, not in the material gain or possession.", he tried to wreak his vengeance or frustration with women on me.I hate men who try to feel superior suppressing a woman's voice. He might have suffered some wrongs in his life but that doesnt justify his action of ventillating his frustration on someone he has not met for years. I immediately dropped him off from my friend's list refusing to be treated like a punch bag.
2) Dead before death kind: I dont feel any empathy for the people who give up even before the battle is started. In short, people lacking the mental strength to fight back annoys me. I have seen friends and even near and dear ones who are relatively in a much more better condition than many, crying over their lot and indulging themselves in eternal self-pity. They are so self-centred that they refuse to see beyond the narrow walls of their own life and crib and complain how unhappy they are whereas people really in suffering donot have the luxury to ponder and complain about their fate. This "dead before death kind" lacks the fighting spirit and believes that a fairy will appear from nowhere and set everything right. They dont have the strength to fight their own battle and they constantly look at others for support. I know someone who is so timid to confront her own husband that she pushes her underage daughter forward to fight with him on her defense. When asked why she is ruining the innocence of her child by exposing her to the ugly side of life, she answered "Because I cant fight with him.I fear his temper and he shouts a lot." Okay, so your child can fight her father, but you dont have the guts to confront a short-tempered husband. How silly that sounds. On the other hand, I have seen people who overcome challenging and traumatic situations, which might knock over even an optimist into self-pity, boldly. There is one beautiful girl whose right hand got amputated in an accident at a tender age of 21 years. Many of us including myself would have gone into a phase of perennial depression, facing a trauma like this. She is an architect engineer for whom her right hand was everything, but she refused to give up and when I see her combatting her situation so bravely, I feel so inspired.
3) Comparison and jealousy: I hate the lot who spend hours comparing themselves with others and on calculation how better or worse their condition is compared to their peers.Out of this constant comparison forms jealousy which sometimes even proves fatal for a relationship or friendship.I had a friend during my childhood to grown up years whom I shared a close bond with, atleast I believed so till I realized that she suffered from a kind of inferiority complex about herself and since I was the weak kind, immature devoid of personality, she used to feel superior by belittling me. When she got higher first division in matriculation exam with just 25 marks short from getting star marks and I barely managed to obtain first division, she started boasting that off, sometimes to the extent of hurting me making comments like "Arrey ami oi college e chance pachchi naa, tui pabi ki kore" (arrey, I am not getting admission in that college, how cud you?) After the results of higher secondary exam were out and I got through with first division in arts stream and she got second division in science stream, she stopped calling me up and visiting my house. So one day on my way to their house, I met her and her mother. Her mother instead of congratulating and boosting up my confidence saying something in praise made a comment "amar meye arts niye porle higher first division jeto." (If my daughter would have studied with arts, she would have scored higher first division.") You see if a mother is like this, you cannot expect a better person from her daughter.I remember after I took admission in CU for masters in English and my friend didnt get chance in MSc, her mother stopped talking to me when I used to visit her house.It's only when my friend's marriage got fixed that her mother started treating me well into their home. My friend continued her rivalry with me till she got married, and after that I discontinued f'ship with her. Well, I tried many a time to cut loose from her company, but everytime I used to distance myself away, she on some pretext or the other used to call me up or visit my house with a cake or gift to revive the f'ship. I had a problem back then. I couldnot behave rudely to people or say any hurtful words. She kept taking advantage of my weakness and used me to her benefit till she got married.She was one of my childhood friends whom I loved a lot, but jealousy and constant comparison proved detrimental to our f'ship. While I was fine with her achievement and success, she had problem with mine. I didnt attend her nuptial ceremony cause I was invited only the day before her wedding while her marriage was fixed two months earlier and she lived in the same locality as me. She tried to contact me twice or thrice after her marriage, but I didnt respond back cause I realized that it's better to stay friendless and lonely than keeping a bad friend for company.
4) I am Best: If inferiority complex is damaging to the growth of one's personality, same is true for people suffering from superiority complex. People with superiority complex are so self-absorbed that they spend considerable amount of time blowing their own trumpet without waiting for others to sing praises for them. When I used to work in a higher secondary school as an assistant teacher I had one colleague who used to think that she was best at everything, which is a fine thing by the way if one could be best at everything, but wait, let others give compliments to you, otherwise constant self-praise and bragging makes you a very nagging person to others.She was amiable and open-minded by heart and good as a human being, but this tendency of constant self-aggrandizement and self-praise made her unpleasant to everyone.
5) Fake Personae: I hate fake people. I am sure many of us might have come across this bunch of people who fabricate stories glorifying themselves to substantiate their superiority. Propelled may be by an inferiority complex these people with an intent to show themselves superior or on par with their peers resort to lies, sometimes in a compulsive manner. The problem is that the people who lie compulsively dont realize that the little incongruities in facts and figures expose themselves as liars to others and that just because some people are polite enough not to say something harsh right into your face exposing you, doesnot mean that they are buying your words and cant see through the fabrication.
6) Hypocrites: There are people whose actions dont match their words and who dont practise what they preach, whose versions and opinions change in next to no time with the change of season and situation. That childhood friend of mine whom I mentioned in the third paragraph used to always taunt me about my brother having passed out from a private engineering college in Bangalore. My brother is 10yrs senior to me and he had gone through a struggling period with regard to landing up with a good job. He is now doing pretty fine careerwise but he once spent time sitting at home unemployed. This friend of mine used to say many hurtful words to me relating to my brother's unemployment and often used to say that the college my brother passed out from was bad and hence he had problem getting a good job. Well, years later her marriage got fixed with someone who passed out from the same Engineering college my brother got his degree from. You ought to have seen the change in her tone then. She called me up and started saying, "tor dada r college ta oto kharap noi re.amar husband o okhan thekei pass koreche". (Your brother's college is not that bad actually, my husband too has passed out from there.)
7) Abusive people: I notice that among youngsters using the "F" words has become a kind of fad, which is so obvious if you tune in to any reality show involving youngsters and half of the words they say are beeped. I find those people so very annoying who begin a heated argument with an abusive word or sentence.I often see even highly qualified people using dirtiest of slangs to attack an opponent. Hurling abuses to unnerve an opponent is a huge turn-off for it can create rifts in hearts and antagonize people, to such an extent that sometimes the damage caused by reviling and ribaldry doesnot heal at all.
8) Unsolicited Advisors: When I was working in a school, there were colleagues who presumed that they had the prerogative by virture of their seniority to advise their juniors, not only about professional matters but also about very personal things.They just didnt know when and where to draw the line and some of them were so annoying that they used to make constant intrusion into my personal space by giving me advice on personal matters including children, marriage,clothes and diet. After marriage I put on a considerable weight and I wanted to shed a few kilos. With that goal, I started a diet and tried avoiding rice as best as possible. During recess instead of taking roti or rice with curry, I went for lighter meals like fruit salad or a bowl of vegetables etc. It caught the eyes of my colleagues according to whom heavy lunch consisting of rotis or rice is an ideal meal. So these unsolicited self-acclaimed well-wishers literally started bugging me with questions about my diet making predictions as how this kind of light meal is going to make a long-time ill impact on my health and I would suffer problem during child-birth. Then after the completion of one year of my marriage came the barrage of advices with regard to family planning and how no matter what I should be thinking of taking a child. I never felt such pressure from my own mother and mother in law for conceiving and these people who were nothing more than colleagues to me, who were never to be seen in close vicinity in time of need, pried into my private matters to such a nagging extent that I literally felt 'rescued' when I quit the job ultimately.
