BoB’s Banter

Robert Clements is a journalist and newspaper columnist. With

an estimated 6 million readership, Bob’s Banter is published in

over 30 newspapers and magazines in nearly every state in India,

as well as in the top newspapers of Bangladesh, Dubai and

Pakistan, and is also translated into Hindi.

ROBERT CLEMENTS

S

omething I’ve grown fond of doing lately is to

decide what music or podcast I’m going to listen to

every morning, put it on, and then get on with a

fast one-hour walk on the jogging track nearby. It

was while one song ended and the other about to begin

that I heard the distinct sound of

drumbeats. It was loud and clear

and very disturbing.

“Tell them to stop!” I said angrily

to the watchman.

“Who, sir?”

“Those drummers!” I said.

“But there are no drummers, sir!”

said the surprised watchman, as I

angrily pulled off my earphones

and realized there was no sound of

drums at all! I sheepishly put back

my earphones and realized those

sounds had come from the song

I was listening to. I apologized to

the watchman who looked at me

strangely, shook his head and went

back to his work.

Those drumbeats in his head started making themselves

heard whenever he felt competition from others.

His past hammered those drumbeats into his present.

There’s another lady, stinking rich, but extremely

miserly. It’s okay if she’s so with

her own money, but sitting on

different committees, she acts like

a watchman with a gun outside

the treasury room, and doesn’t

allow a penny to be spent. It’s

always good to have a careful

person on a trust or committee,

but when someone doesn’t allow

money to be used for a good

cause or investments to be made,

the organization suffers.

It was only recently that she told

me of times in her childhood when

her mother struggled to put food

on their table.

Again, drumbeats from the past

beating into the present.

I had to pull off my earphones to

realize those drum sounds were

I had reacted angrily to drumbeats in my head.

Many of us do the same, don’t we? It needn’t be music

or podcasts but something quite similar.

I know a priest, an extremely good and powerful

speaker who reacts strongly to such drumbeats.

Whenever he sees somebody who is talented, either a

good pianist, choir conductor or even a lay preacher

he sees red, and, on some pretext tries to control him/

her. On looking deeper, I found the priest had an elder

brother and there had always been a normal sibling

rivalry between them in their childhood.

not from outside but from the instrument plugged into

my head. And that’s exactly what we all need to do.

Look deep into extreme reactions, understand the source

and pull out the chord that connects us to traumas of the

past. Go to a professional, like a psychologist, or have

the Mighty Professional up there identify where those

drumbeats stem from, then pull off those earphones and

live gloriously in the present!