Hiren Deliwala
By Hiren Deliwala
A few months ago, a close friend came back from an international trip. A group of us got together for dinner to hear about it. How was the food? The people? Did the trip live up to the hype? For about four minutes we actually talked about his trip. Then someone mentioned their bag didn’t arrive on time on their last flight, and that was it. For the next forty minutes, every person at that table had a horror story. Wrong terminals. Lost luggage. A delay that cost someone a connection. The friend who just returned from his trip barely said another word.
I participated fully. Of course I did. And naturally, in my head, I wasn’t the one complaining. Everyone else was.
There is something contagious about group complaining. One person starts, someone else matches it, and within minutes the whole room has piled on. Nobody planned it. Nobody wanted the evening to go that way. But complaining spreads in a way that good news rarely does. If someone says their flight was wonderful and they got upgraded, people smile politely and move on. If someone says the airline lost their bag, six people immediately have a story.
And the language gets bigger as the pile grows. Yeh log to chor hai. The worst airline ever. They don’t care about customers at all. Big sweeping verdicts from people who couldn’t tell you the first thing about that airline five minutes earlier. Including me.
What’s strange is how we feel after. Not better, exactly. Like we ate something that looked like a meal but left us emptier than before.
I’ve been thinking about why we do it and I think the honest answer is that it’s easy. Complaining requires nothing. You don’t have to be vulnerable. You don’t have to share anything real. You just have to agree that the traffic is terrible and the insurance companies are thieves and the customs line at the airport is designed to break the human spirit. Everyone nods. Nobody is wrong. Nobody is challenged. It feels like conversation, but it costs nothing.
The problem is it also produces nothing. There’s no action at the end of it. No one walks away from the flight delay pile-on and files a complaint or switches airlines or does anything at all. We just go home slightly more convinced that things are bad and there’s nothing to be done about it.
My kids won’t have it from me though. Not long ago I was going on about something in the house — some decoration or setup that had been bothering me for a while. I had opinions. Strong ones. My daughter looked at me and said, “Dad, don’t complain if you’re not going to do anything about it. Are you willing to do something? Why don’t you come up with ideas and share them?” My son nodded. They were right and I knew it immediately, which made it worse. I had been playing the victim of my own living room.
Unless I am part of the solution, or at least willing to get involved, I have no business complaining and calling it communication.
Here is the part I find harder to admit. My friends are good to me. They listen when I go on about traffic, about work, about whatever is bothering me that week. The guys’ group hears me complain about my wife sometimes — sorry honey, you are almost perfect. And we give each other a pass on all of it. We either join in or offer sympathy. We never push back. We never say, okay but what are you going to do about it?
I have never asked them to. Partly because it’s comfortable the way it is. Partly because I’m not sure how it would land. But honestly? I think I would love it. The friendships where someone occasionally says, “Wait, are you sure about that?” or “Have you thought about it from the other side?” are the ones that feel most real to me. My daughter and son do it and yes, in the moment it stings a little. But I always feel better after.
I haven’t worked up the courage to ask my friends for that yet. Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll send them this essay and see what happens.
I’m not saying we should stop complaining. Some of the most important changes in the world started because someone refused to accept something that everyone else had learned to live with. Complaining with purpose is how things get fixed. But there’s a difference between that and what happens at most dinner parties. The same complaints, the same outrage, same table, different dinner.
I want to try and catch myself more. Not every time. But sometimes, when I’m about to launch into the airport customs story for the fourth time, maybe I’ll ask myself: am I saying something or just making noise?
Usually, it’s the second one.
Hiren Deliwala is a Charlotte-based overthinker, closet philosopher, and avid board gamer. He writes about everyday life, Indian upbringing, and finding humor in the chaos. When not philosophizing over chai, he’s usually losing arguments to his wife and, shockingly, learning from them. Contact: hcdeliwala@gmail.com
