Even if you think that Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is a pure tragedy of art and complete shit, you can save yourself from being abashed if you arc your eyebrows, curl your lips and call the painting interesting first and then pass priceless comments upon how Da Vinci could have made minor adjustments in the picture to make it look a bit better. Similarly, this word saves you from public embarrassment if what you think is in complete contrast with the ideas of masses. He surely has got a thinking head over his shoulders. If the very next ball produces a healthy result, he would quickly replace the adjective with a more absolved one and say-what a splendid tactics by the captain. “It’s an interesting tactics,” says a commentating Rameez Raza whenever he isn’t sure why the captain made a particular field placement. It also buys you time when you are not quite sure about the quality of something. The word interesting is also used when one struggles to find a suitable adjective to describe a particular person, thing or event-something like what I did at the beginning of this post (if you haven’t noticed yet). I couldn’t decide if I would have liked him calling me names more, for I struggled to decipher what he exactly meant when he tagged me interesting. He, for some mysterious reasons beyond my mediocre intellect, opted for the softer choice of calling me interesting. For an avid fan of Amitabh that he was (he loved his every film-even movies like Mrityudaata and Boom), listening my statement was almost an offence and he wanted to call me names which I had never heard before.
“You are actually a very interesting guy,” alleged a stranger whom I had met barely half an hour before when I apprized him that I was a big critic of Amitabh Bachchan’s contemporary works. It has got different meanings-ranging from one end of the spectrum where it might mean virtuous and groovy to the other end where it may also mean spoilt and ridiculous.
Interesting, in particular, is-ummm what shall I say-a very interesting word.