The False Comfort of Words -Md. Kausar Uddin Ahmed

When I was in college, I first read William Somerset Maugham’s short story, “The Luncheon.” The story revolved around a poor writer who fell prey to a so-called lady of taste. She kept ordering expensive dishes while pretending she only eats lightly. Ultimately, the writer had to foot the bill and faced financial ruin for a month. Back then, I thought, “What a humorous exaggeration!”

Now, when I look at my situation, I feel like my case is not very different from Maugham’s. The only difference is that no lady was fooling me. It was me, fooling myself. My choices, my own company, my justifications. I kept ordering, paying, spending, and convincing myself it’s all fine. Now I am tallying my remaining coins for the month, smiling in the same manner as that impoverished writer did at the conclusion of the story.

How we become carried away, how we let others or our own impulses run the show. Nobody forces us; we just like to pretend they do. Sometimes, the realisation occurs too late, once the consequences have already been faced.

When I think deeply, I realise the story has a lesson I ignored back in college. Maugham penned the story with humour, yet it contains a cautionary tale about human frailty, our tendency to overreact, and our tendency to allow others or even ourselves to dictate our choices.

Whenever I recall this story, I don’t laugh at the writer’s misery. I laugh at myself, because I too became the victim of the same foolishness, only in a slightly different form. In truth, I derive the same amusement from my own foolishness as the writer experienced years later, when he observed that the woman had gained weight and silently took his subtle revenge.

Then another story came to mind from Humayun Ahmed’s “Elebele”. He stated that many people believe children are always truthful. But according to him, that is not correct. Children speak the truth only when it is necessary to embarrass someone. Then he told a funny, painful story.

He knew a “cultured” lady who always praised his writings. She welcomed him often at her house, where they used to talk about literature and serious topics. One day he went to her home again, and the discussion was about why Bangladesh never produced a brilliant novelist like Turgenev. Suddenly, the lady’s little daughter spoke out: “Uncle, my mother calls you a goat.”

The whole room froze. The lady, who was so elegant and cultured, became like a stone. That one innocent, brutal sentence killed all the high discussion in a second. Humayun Ahmed remarked that the proverb “excessive grief turns one into stone” is very true, because at that moment the lady turned into stone. The Turgenev topic ended right there.

Too much appreciation is never pure. People say good words, sometimes for social manners, sometimes for hidden reasons. And children, without knowing the weight of their words, sometimes expose the truth in the most direct way. That’s why we should not melt whenever people praise us. Behind those words, there might be something else.

If I connect it with my joyful life, I also faced situations when people praised me more than I deserved. For a moment I felt pleased; I felt important. Later I realised not all of them were honest words. Some were just courtesy, some were strategies. If I take all of them seriously, I will be the fool in the room.

In reality, no writer, no teacher, no human being is perfect. If someone is praising you endlessly without any criticism, maybe they don’t really mean it. Who knows, maybe in the kitchen that same person is also calling me a goat.

I was always an introvert and straightforward by nature. When I got admitted to a new school in class nine, I faced a strange struggle. One of our teachers was very fond of praise. She loved when students memorised her lessons line by line and repeated them back exactly as in the book. Most of my classmates would keep the book open in front of them, and somehow they managed to impress her by giving the answers just as she wanted, even mixing it with sweet words of praise. I was not used to that and failed to impress her. She started to dislike me, and every class I felt bullied by her words. She used to say me, “Gobet.”
Then the midterm exam came. I was so tense. At that time, our nightcare teacher gave me around twenty minutes of guidance. He explained things in a simple way, and I only focused on those points. The next day in the exam, I wrote exactly what I understood from him.

When the teacher checked my paper, she said, “He wrote solid, as he knows. No bullshit in his copy.” And I was one of the three students who passed in her subjects. The same teacher who disliked me began to see me differently. Later I even became one of her favourite students. (She actually was the most qualified teacher in our school then. Later she played a great part in developing aour critical analysis power, teaching us how to reference properly and how to question things.)

Then there’s William Shakespeare’s “King Lear”, the story of a father who wanted to divide his kingdom among his daughters according to how much they claimed to love him. The two elder daughters, Goneril and Regan, showered him with long praises and sweet words. Lear was happy and gave them the largest shares. But the youngest daughter, Cordelia, who actually loved him most, refused to flatter. She said simply that she loved him as a daughter should. Lear became frustrated and cut her off completely. Later, those two elder daughters betrayed him and drove him into madness, while Cordelia, who was silent in words, remained loyal. By the time Lear understood the truth, it was already too late.

Even in life now, I feel the same struggle. My mother often asks me how much I love her. I cannot provide her a decorated reply. I remain silent or awkward. That doesn’t mean the feeling is absent. Cordelia’s silence in King Lear reminds me of myself.

And that’s when it struck me: all faced the same illusion: the false comfort of words. Whether it’s expensive praise or fancy flattery, words can easily disguise the truth. Maybe that’s the ultimate lesson literature has been trying to teach us all along: don’t trust every shining word. Look for the quiet truth beneath it. Because in the end, silence, when it’s sincere, speaks louder than all the pretty lies in the world.