Taking a critical look at the
many-sided articles, reviews and essays I have written in the English
language newspapers in India over the past 50+ years, I am glad to see
that hundreds of them have stood the test of time and still seem to be
universally relevant and true. And so few are the flaws in their logic,
insights and language that I rarely find it necessary to make any
specific corrections or even to touch up the published texts.
Anyway,
here's a vintage essay which tempts me to add a couple of thoughts now.
One of them I have already used as the title of this blog ; and let
me tell you about the other one after you read the original text!
------------------
THE HINDU Sunday Magazine
50 years ago
Pep Talks
I
fully endorse the popular view that in these hard and unsettled times
there is greater need for action and less for talking ; but all the
same, I can't help feeling that 'pep' talks ought to be treated on a different footing. I am all for pep talks. There's nothing like a pep
talk to brighten your outlook and boost your confidence, whether you're
listening to one or delivering it.
A
really competent pep talk can do wonders to one's morale. It can
dispel the gloom of the worst pessimist, and make him as lively as a
young pup. It can stimulate the lazybones to leap into action. Pep
talks are to the spirit what drugs are to the flesh : they can offer
fresh hope to a heart in despair, and can bring real comfort to a soul
in distress.
Unfortunately, however, the effects of pep talks, like
those of medicines, are always short-lived. There's no such thing as a
pep talk with permanent results. No wonder there is such a sizable and
recurring demand for pep talks, just as for prescriptions.
Audience
Pep
talks are often aimed at individuals, but they can be administered with
equal efficiency to groups. In fact,the bigger the audience, the
better the results, as there's less scope for the listeners to talk
back. For, after all, by the time a pep talk is allowed to deteriorate
into a discussion, it has already lost much of its pep : there's
obviously more punch in a blustering drill-sergeant's tirade to his
squad than in an affable professor's debate with his scholars.
The
most powerful and spectacular pep talks, naturally, are those addressed
to the nation ; one readily recalls the war-time speeches of the late
Mr. Churchill. Unfortunately for humanity, the world itself still
happens to be too dispersed a forum to make pep talks feasible on a
global scale! But one must not imagine that the listeners' acquiescence
alone invariably guarantees the fruitfulness of pep talks : the pastor
is always heard in hushed silence by his flock, but how often can it
be said truthfully that his sermons uplift the churchgoers' souls?
Pepscripts
Pep
talks are not always necessarily spoken ; they are often transcribed
as letters and despatched by mail. If they're sufficiently long-winded,
they can even be printed, like novels. In fact, enough tomes of this
kind have already been compiled by prolific pepmasters, like Mr. Dale
Carnegie, to fill a respectable amount of space in any library in the
world.
But
pep talks in print are not confined to books, by any means ; they have
found a permanent niche in most women's magazines the world over.
Quite intriguingly, the authors of these spiritual recipes happen
mostly to be men. I suppose the masculine mentor is expected to have a
stronger appeal for the depressed female ; but
if that's really the case, it does seem rather strange that the
Emancipated Eve, who obviously patronizes these publications, should so
readily permit the male of the species to show her the way out of her
own feminine blues!
Doctors
The
psychiatrist dispenses a do-it-yourself variety of pep talks. Instead
of letting his clients have an honest nail-and-hammer pep talk (which is
what they really require), he persuades them to lie down on a couch and
do it themselves, and gets a substantial fee afterwards for their
trouble. The physician, on the other hand, is always a willing donor of
pep talks. His services do not explicitly include oral encouragement,
but he seldom fails to give it ; and though he may charge you heavily
enough for his overheads, he never does bill you for his pep talks.
--------------------
PostScript, 2014
Of tonics, doctors and pepscripts
(1)
I don't know why I didn't think of tonics when I wrote about pep talks
50 years ago. True, pep talks are like medicines and other drugs in
different contexts ; but far more often they're like a tonic. I have now
added the thought as the title of this blog, rather than trying to
revise the text, which would need several changes.
(2)
But the second thought can be inserted quite smoothly in the text,
simply by extending the second sentence of the last paragraph as
follows:
The physician, on the other hand, is always a willing donor of pep talks, especially if he's your family doctor.
I
have no idea why this hadn't occurred to me either, particularly
because I had written a whole essay on the family doctor at about the
same time as this one. (Please see Articulations Online, 3 May 2014 -- Universal Image Of The Family Doctor, Who's Also A Family Friend).
(3)
As must be obvious to my regular readers, I do have a flair (or call
it an obsession, if you like!) for bending and twisting actual words and
names into amusingly imaginary ones. The expression pepmasters in paragraph 5 of this essay is one of the oldest samples I can produce from my published works.
In
the original series of essays in THE HINDU in the 1960s, I hadn't used
any sub-titles ; but when presenting them in this blog, I have sometimes
found it useful to divide the texts with sub-titles. On this occasion, it
has given me an opportunity to a brand-new expression -- pepscripts. Naturally, I find it reassuring that I still haven't lost my skills as a wordsmith!
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