Honk was the blow of the conch!

One of the things I learnt especially after my broken jaw surgery was "silence". "Patience" obviously was the other aspect I learnt.  I used to be a kid who would never give up a reward coming your way - I will shout to get it when it gets wrongly announced.  On the same manner, I used to always point fingers at someone when there is a problem.  Clearly not a team person - probably that aspect taught me to live alone and self-dependent but  it obviously destroyed the socializing behavior in me.  Of age, destroying "ego" has now become a habit and is still an art being learnt.  The joy is always in the learning.

Giving an advice, I thought was always valuable.  Of course, it makes sense only when asked for - "silence is golden" otherwise.  So here goes the incident.  For a person who does not even bother to snooze, I woke up today to a phone call.  Having skipped the dinner yesterday, I felt hungry and hurried to preparing some breads after the phone call.  I beat my roommate today in waking up but could not beat him for the bath.  Usually my roomie leaves to office at 9am and today was no difference.  Even though I hurried to the bath just after him so I could carpool with him, he had plans of going earlier than usual.  So I thought I can take a cab to office, but unfortunately he left something in the bathroom for which he had to wait for me to finish my bath.  This frustrated my roommate I guess but being the gentleman he is, offered the ride and thus we started off together.

En route to office, there was this signal, where we take left.  There were two left turning lanes and we were on the leftmost one.  So here is the advice - "stick to your lane while taking turns".  I had told this to my friend many times in the past but I kept getting a "thats okay" and "it is legal" kind of responses.  This time though, I kept quiet.  So my friend as usual while taking the left turn goes into the right lane and there was it, the honk from the car to the right of us.  The interesting part this time though was we changed not just one lane to our right, but three lanes.  The honk was so gentle, it was light and only for a fraction-second - I like that from the Americans, a nice warning gesture.  But this honk to me sounded like the blow of the conch just before the war, a signal for death.  Happy it was only a honk rather than a kiss - hopefully my friend had learnt a lesson there.  I would have warned him, but would have only resulted in an even more aggressive behavior from my friend.  I know for sure, he will learn from my silence, as I had learnt many a lesson the same way.

And just coincidence, I read today and learn - "When you are right, keep quiet, and when are you wrong, admit it", this to maintain the relationships.  Not sure if I agree to this completely but for the incident I described, cent per cent.