“Hello!” After a short while I heard again, this time more clearly. “How do you do?”

I looked across the fence, though sheepishly, at my neighbor’s gate where the voice came from. In fact, I was reading my newspaper as well as savoring my morning coffee in my front yard. Someone was passing by and he was apparently asking after my neighbor “How are you” when the latter was just coming out of his house. So I reverted back to the editorial section seriously. By the time the last drops of coffee dried out on my lips I looked again in the direction of my neighbor’s house. The man who said “how do you do’ was still hanging there trapped in a one-sided conversation, which was listening to my neighbor. The poor chap appeared sullen and crestfallen in the rising sun with his own shadow shrinking. He was by now looking wondrously at his shadow withdrawing from my neighbor’s freshly painted fencing wall as the sun moved up. He began folding his hands as if begging for his leave from my neighbor. He seemed sagging deeper into the ground below the asphalt of the street. My friend was still pouring out all his difficulties, like his wife mistaking the wall of  their garage for a runway, his son failing in Class X exams, his not getting promoted for a second time and his cat dying of mysterious chills.

I started for my office fully dressed up after a refreshing bath. I was about to close my wicker gate when I saw the passerby dragging his feet laboriously towards his original intended destination, that was before he greeted my neighbor with a ‘how do you do’. My neighbor soon rushed back into his home once he finished emptying his woes successfully. The poor passerby while walking off greeted me with a mere nod of his head that suggested he was determined not to say any verbal greeting for the rest of his life, not even a shorter versions like  ‘Howrya’, ‘Howdy’, ‘Whassup’ etc.. I have never seen him passing our houses again.

That day I made a resolution that I should never make the mistake of greeting with a ‘How do you do’. Some people might take the question in the greetings literally like my neighbor. Rather I should use a simple Namastè/ Salaam or just Hi and stop there.