So it was easy to fall out of habit. It is proving even harder to get back in. I can’t complete a post. An array of half formed thoughts, a clutter of unfinished posts. I have never gone so long without writing anything. But every time I sit down and try, my mind veers off to that one incident I am trying very hard to forget and I have to get up and do something to distract myself, to shut my thoughts up. So what happened you ask? Well, something shocking that almost devastated me. I was picking up my remains scattered all over for the past few months. Had it not been for the person I call my better (literally) half, I’d be sitting in a lunatic asylum right now. Still, I haven’t been able to detach myself from it enough to be able to talk about it. That’s for another day. For now, I will celebrate that I am writing my first published post in five months (has it been five months already?) and make it something lighthearted.Office these days has been the one bright spot in my life. I am unwittingly thrown into hilarious situations every now and then. A misunderstanding here or a misinterpretation there. Not a day passes when I am not confronted by another specimen from the language that propagates itself as English. I used to be incredulous before but now every time I see one of those, I quite cheer up. They are hilarious, sometimes baffling, but you can sure have a good laugh at their expense. In this new language my name is spelt and pronounced as Rajruba. People who speak this language suffer from Chicken Box. They have doubt in every email that is sent to them. They even call themselves “prepared documents”. In this post I am going to laugh at this new language and laugh as hard as I can. The other day, a girl pinged me in the instant messenger to say that she was done with the documentation work I had assigned to her. Here is an excerpt. A new guy has joined the team. The day he joined the team he proclaimed himself as a man of simple living and high thinking. A few days back he has shocked the wit out of me by telling the project manager that he will knock her up. Imagine her embarrassment!In an unrelated context, his emails to his bosses start this way:“HiAs per discussed with Rajrupa:”In another example, his boss asks me:“can u print it for me - I tried but it doesnt it” I have plenty more to share but I guess you can already tell my frustrations. Call me the Grammar Nazi or you can call me a rigid old fashioned fool but it will never be okay to me just because as-long-as-everyone-can-understand-what’s-being-said-it’s-fine. It is a sin to me to distort a language this terribly.And in reality, I laugh when I encounter such phrases because otherwise I would strangle the person opposite to me, put him in the same chicken box he is suffering from and throw the box away. And now, somehow the post is not so funny anymore. And I am angry! But then here is what just happened:A colleague sends an IM:Colleague: I heard that you have a pair sneakers!Me (Wondering why on earth he wants to know about my shoes): Yes I do! I have two pairs in fact.Colleague: Oh you have four sneakers aah? What will you do with so many? Can you give me one?Me (More incredulously): Umm.. I am not sure they will fit you!Colleague: Fit me? Why it has eggs aah?Me (Finally Confessing): I don’t understand what you are saying.Colleague: See I am a vegetarian. I don’t eat eggs. That’s why you are saying it won’t fit me right? That’s when it hits me. He is talking about the chocolate bars called Snickers! Love,
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Riot of Random