The unImportance of Small Talk

I have been trained and tutored in the art of small talk. It has served me well. I have seven standard questions made for the sole purpose of saving me from The Uncomfortable, Awkward Silence.

Hello, how do you do?
How is everybody at home?
How is work?
Nice weather, isn't it?
Pity about the cricket match, right?
So, which is the last movie you saw?
Nice meeting you, why don't we meet up again?

So I feel very pleased when I am faced with somebody who puts me through the same drill. So that I can guiltlessly reciprocate the insincerity.

I'm fine.
Everybody's fine.
Work is fine.
The weather's fine.
Oh yes, the Indian cricket team, maybe if they weren't so smug with all those multi-crore sponser deals ...
I just saw 15, Park Avenue. My God, they'll serve you anything in the name of off-beat cinema.
Nice to meet you too, we must meet again!

Once in a while, and this is much too rare, you meet somebody with whom you can have a real conversation. The kind that is shared over cups of mint chai, where space and time becomes immaterial.

Do you believe in God?
Do you give money to beggars?
Do you support the capital punishment?
What do you think is the meaning of life?
Which would you choose- driven, ambitious and alone in the fast lane, or happy and satisified with shades of mediocrity?
Is it better to have loved and lost or to have never loved at all?

Basically, all that armchair stuff.

But here's the problem - one type of conversation is boring and inconsequential and the other type is philosophical babble that can sometimes get too heavy to digest over chai.

So are we just doomed to alternate between the dull and the deep?

One day in the morning, when I was late as usual, balancing my coat, steth, bag, food, water, car keys, terrified of being late for an exam, certain that I'd forgotten evrything, and running down the stairs, I met my neighbour (the kind of person for whom the small talk was designed) and I said to her, reflexely, "Hello, how are you?"

And she said something totally bizarre and unpredictable, punctuating it with a benign smirk - "Better than you."

This is my second encounter, in a span of a month, where I have encountered a different species- the deconditioned social animal who speaks his mind. And I am foxed.
Small talk has failed.

So, I turned to the other type of thing I do best - overanalyzing.
I was having coffee with a cousin of mine and I told her about the incident. So there I was talking about how being courteous is unnatural but has to be faked because otherwise we'd have social anarchy and I swear I just saw her eyes glaze over, she sat there, her coffee growing cold, staring at me with this really unnatural expression and not listening to a word I was saying.

So if small talk is out, and nobody likes pseudo intellectual conversations either - what's left?

I don't know, I've only really alternated between those two.

There is, of course, social deconditioning ( my fav cliche - if you cant beat them, join them)
which involves speaking the truth.

Too bad, haven't done that in a long while.