I was at a party when I came across a person, who alleged that he had a lot of insider information about other people’s business.
According to him, the wind just “carried the conversations” to his ears. I jokingly replied that the “wind” was certainly a lot friendlier to him than to the rest of us in that room.
“It is not,” he said smugly. “I just make a little adjustment.”
He did not care to elucidate his ambiguous references while I stopped the urge to tell him that the proper word for “adjustment” was actually “snooping”.
“What if there was no wind?” I inquired.
“Then I shift a little closer to the subjects,” was his clever reply.
“How close?” I prodded.
“Close enough,” he said like an experienced gossipmonger; “in other words, I join the conversation and even ‘guide’ it to the right direction if it appears to be boring.”
I began to realise how interesting it was to talk to him. Then I decided to make him have a taste of his own medicine - employ the same tactics he used on his unsuspecting ‘victims’ to get more information from him.
“How would you ‘direct’ a conversation?” I asked him nonchalantly.
“No one likes to listen about the weather,” he explained, as if he was letting me in on a secret. “But you certainly would want to know about someone’s life and his relationships from other people. So you put a series of questions in that direction.”
As we were talking, he pointed a finger to three people, who were busy talking with each other in a hushed manner.
“The wind is telling me something interesting is being talked about in that little group,” he said. “Shall we go there so that I can demonstrate it to you?”
I politely declined his offer; snooping into other people’s business has never been much of a concern for me. However, I did have another query.
“There must be a strong pull to what you do. What is it?”
“What else would a retired man like me do?” He answered. “Gardening and television is not my cup of tea.”
I was not too surprised; life can be quite empty when a busy person suddenly has too much time on his hands. People complain of time flying by quickly when they are earning a living, but they whine incessantly feeling bored after retiring from work. For those who don’t have a plan to use their time productively post-retirement, the idle hours can actually be quite a nuisance.
However, there are certainly better ways to keep one occupied than prying into other people’s affairs. So how does one find something useful to do when time is on your side? The man I met was clearly driven by a strong sense of a misplaced duty; he made it his business knowing the details of people’s lives by cleverly leading them to divulge their secrets.
There are actually hundreds of useful things waiting to be done, if one has the right attitude. I now understand why my late uncle decided to breed pigeons after he retired. It was his way of finding a new direction in his life by making himself useful. Like many retirees, who embark on a new adventure, he knew nothing about pigeons. But he rightfully knew that staying idle would result in nothing but pain. He knew that he could add more value to his life by using time more productively.

The writer is an Oman-based freelance columnist. This article has been reproduced from the Khaleej Times.