Nitpicking

A few of my pet peeves, more to follow soon!

1. Using "anyways" instead of "anyway".

2. The phrase "My bad".
It sounds so terribly incomplete somehow, without a follow-up noun to the phrase.
I'm rather surprised to discover that Shakespeare used it too, apparently:

"our love and pity doth the impression fill
Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?"

3. Incorrect use of archaic English.

4. Incorrect use of French.(Or Spanish, or Italian, or Japanese, for that matter.)
I see this in a lot of shop/restaurant signs, blogs etc. I met a Frenchman
recently, and he said he was bemused to see boards blithely peppered with "la" and "le" and even " l' ", without thought for whether the noun following the pronoun was actually feminine, masculine or starting with a vowel.

5. People who've learnt British English (and spellings) throughout school suddenly switching
to American English. Yes, even those who're still in India.

6. SMS-speak. (shudder.)

7. People using "loose" when they mean "lose".

8. Corporate-speak . ("on the same page", "paradigm shift", "revert back")

9. Nouns turned into verbs. ("He lunched at noon.", "Loan me a fiver.")

10. Incorrect use of apostrophes. (It's, its, its')

Saawari-yawwwn!

And so the media blitzkrieg reached its screaming pinnacle over the Diwali weekend.
We saw the whole circus unfold over the last few months, the two big banners striving to out-do each other in every way, the stars of both films appearing on TV shows left, right and centre, news channels eating out of their hands for savvy sound-bytes and more.

So the day came when I popped off to watch Saawariya, what with all the positive buzz over its dreamy sets, the pair of likeable young stars, the formidable Sanjay Leela Bhansali with his penchant for intense, passionate cinema, the backdrop of a classic Dostoyevsky short story and a decent music score.Oh yes, the movie seemed promising alright!

And what of the movie itself?
Well, considering that my review started off on that note, it could only mean bad news ahead.
Hence we start with delectable shots of a Venice/St Petersburg-like Old Town, rather reminiscent of Moulin Rouge incidentally, panning onward to Rani Mukherjee, desperately trying to do the role of a golden-hearted prostitute yet again (and fervently wishing she was doing a song-and-dance number with SRK instead, I bet!)
And then we have the Young Man himself, a little larger than life, cavorting with the gang of prostitutes and making them smile and all that.. the jaadu ki jhappi thing happening full-on.

And aeons and many sugary dialogues and yawns from the audience later, the young lady finally makes her appearance.
I guess that was the first sign.
The original story has this painfully shy and serious young man, who happens to help her when she's being aggressively pursued by an unsavoury character, and then they become friends, and he inevitably falls in love with her, knowing full well that she's already spoken for. And it's all about him, the depth of his feelings, the lengths he goes to help the girl get a note across to her lover, his loneliness.
That's a powerful story, just has raw, believable emotion. But here, our young man is portrayed as an extrovert, a likeable do-gooder, a romantic character so "cute", it takes away the pathos and probably just makes audiences wonder why the girl doesn't get hitched to him. Or makes you wonder why he's running after her when he could just remain happy-go-lucky and move on and find other people. Or makes you wonder why you're still in the theatre watching it, when YOU could move on :-).
So amidst all the blue-green haze of dreamy song sequences and Bollywood-y costumes and rowing boats through canals and singing in the snow, and playing football with women of ill repute, we lose track of his loneliness, his shyness, the fact that he's a friendless stranger in a strange town.
And then on, the story is quite, quite pointless, considering that Bhansali botched up the characterization of the main protagonist.
There's far too much dwelling on the female protagonist, the lovely Sonam Kapoor is made to giggle and cry with a frequency that approaches alarming proportions. There's far too much dwelling on the expendable Rani Mukherjee character, really, it's ridiculous to give a narrator so much footage, it distracts one from the main story.
Salman Khan as the mysterious lover with kohl-lined eyes is a little awkward, but passable, he doesn't hog the limelight like the over-the-top Mukherjee does. The crabby landlady character played by the feisty Zohra Sehgal is decent though, the one shining point in the rambling narrative.

This is one movie I'd have so loved to root for, with all its impeccable credentials and promise. It would have been interesting to watch Ranbir Kapoor play the serious, brooding introvert living his life for those few moments of bliss, instead of a cutesy, cloyingly sweet, larger-than-life character.
It should have ended on a wistful, poignant note, it should have been a real tribute to Dostoyevsky.
Instead, it probably has the Russian master turning in his grave, and the audience wishing it had stayed peacefully indoors for its post-Diwali siesta.

Of travails and the aftermath

It's been one of those testing times again.
Slaved it out day and night at work, managed to get it done before the deadline came whooshing in, and now I feel the after-effects of it all.
Strangely listless and worn-out, with an ever-increasing desire to go and fling something
sharp at the blundering gargoyle who calls himself my boss.

Some characters are so warped! The four or five of us involved in this assignment have been slogging it out and burning the midnight oil and sacrificing weekends, and my immediate boss (who's about as senior as the other four people I worked with) has been cooling his heels and not participating an inch, when infact, HIS superiors have been highly active.
And then I get a mail from him sometime in the middle of our mountain of work, asking me to shift to a different floor!
That's right, bang in the midst of an important chunk of work, what with the deadline hanging over our heads like the sword of Damocles.

And now, he kicks up a big fuss over my not having shifted yet, without even asking if we'd met the deadline or if there had been any challenges along the way. Dunderheaded coconut!!! Bumbling baboon! Bashi bazouk!! (Grateful thanks to Captain Haddock for such satisfying sobriquets.)
How do people like him get to be where they are?

So I had a pow-wow with the HR lady today, and I went to the extent of telling her that I thought my boss was extremely thick-headed, had a bad memory, was inefficient and disinterested!
I suppose I can get mighty blunt when I want to, especially when I know I've nothing to lose, what with the job scene being so positive and all.
I've been meaning to take a break from work, in any case, travel around a bit, and get back to a new job after a month of rejuvenation.
It will be fun to do something like that, troop in to work after a quick vacation, throw my resignation at the hippogriff's face, and just take off, like a free bird... a phoenix soaring into the skies, without a care in the world and a song in her heart.

Yes. That's just what I shall do. Experience rainbows and deep greens, waterfalls and azure seas, craggy mountains and mossy riverbanks, for they await.

Language woes

My new firm seems to take its Indian-ness rather too seriously! While I love Indian languages (and all languages in general), this whole closed-clan, "us-them" syndrome is beginning to annoy me like the dickens. It's bad enough when we're party to it at social occasions, but now I realize it has crept into the boardroom as well.

This must have been around for ages, but I was lucky to have escaped it all these years, at my previous workplace.

Here, I've been shocked to note that no-one thinks twice before starting off in their own languages even during business meetings and technical discussions. They just don't seem to care that there are participants who are completely out of the loop just because they don't speak the same regional language. This also seems to subtly reinforce the whole partisan attitude that most of us suffer from.
There's so much hypocrisy involved here; on the one hand, they like to brand themselves as multi-cultural, global organizations with an Indian core, on the other hand, they do not seem to possess that united Indian core, when they start off in their personal languages.
I even noticed this amongst some of the top executives, at business meetings with international clients!
Of course, it's not a purely Indian problem.. of course we know that the Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, French, Polish, Russian and many other countries do it too. BUT the key difference is that every Frenchman knows French, every Russian knows Russian, and so on, but in India, every Indian doesn't know Kannada, or Marathi or whatever.
There's a reason why we have an official language, even if it's colonial and non-Indian.
And in any case, the single biggest factor for India being the IT hub and all of that is Indian proficiency in English, there's no getting away from that.
So on the one hand, we tout ourselves as global people with excellent English, and at the same time, we don't bother to conform to it at our own meetings and discussions.

I really wonder why there's so much clannishness really? Does it arise out of a deep-rooted feeling of insecurity somehow?
Are we so happy being big fish in small ponds, that we'd rather exclude everyone who'd bring in enough diversity to transform that pond into an ocean?
Are we so insecure that we need to resort to such small-minded techniques to maintain our exclusivity or superiority, sacrificing basic etiquette on the altar of a warped sense of unity?

I'm truly proud of our diverse culture and our languages, and I'm really glad that there are enough people left in this country to care about their roots and their own particular cultures, so that our rich heritage doesn't die out.
But I wish we'd also be open-minded enough about other cultures, undertand the concept of India as a nation (no North-South divide, no regional biases), and develop a sense of inclusion - especially on the professional front.

And I wouldn't have to smile vaguely or tune out of workplace conversations ever again.

Nomenclature rant, again.

Just wondering..

If people refer to "books written by young women for young women" by the rather disparaging term "chick lit", why do we not have a name for those written by young men for young men? Those of the Chetan Bhagat genre, for example?
Drone Tome, anyone? Or maybe, "d**k lit" ?? Hah.

Yeah, sometimes the feminist in me just erupts, and I bristle in annoyance over demeaning terms like the above, and also over the fact that the term "woman" is still often used as a qualifier or adjective... such as woman doctor, woman entrepreneur, woman lawyer, woman writer etc. This subtly gives a message to the subconscious mind that these are rarities or aberrations, and therefore not to be taken quite as seriously as they should be.

Darn it!!
One would think we're still living in the 19th century :-(.

murphy at work again, sigh!

Hmmm, looks like I attracted Mr Murphy with that last post of mine...
(Murphy's thought process on reading it : WHat?!! She has the flu and she's still so full of joie de
whatever?? I must be losing my touch.... I need to work on this some.)

They don't call it Murphy's Law for nothin'.
And so we had a rather disturbing March, and a not-so-great April!!

To paraphrase Plum rather clumsily (am just too grumpy to think of anything original right now), it's like Life handed me strawberries on a silver platter, and one of 'em jumped up and socked me in the eye :-p.
Hmm, on second thoughts, that's a tad too despondent... I don't think I could ever be *that* grumpy!
so how abt...
(apologies to Plum again!) .. Though one couldn't quite call her disgruntled, she was far from being gruntled.
Ah yess.. I think that's about right.

Of course, the silver lining is that I finally posted *something* on this dormant blog of mine...
even if it just turned out to be a vague rant and some awful Plum-plagiarising!

(Oooh thats thrice I used the word "Plum" in this post... we're reeeeally plum-bing the depths today, are we not??!)

Courting danger

I was watching a fairly interesting topic on the Big Fight today, the age-old debate over the diminishing relevance of Socialism vs unbridled capitalism. I'll probably write something about that soon, but what triggered this blog, was the presence of Vijay Mallya as one of the participants. Obviously, he stands for a whole lot of things, but today, his presence happened to remind me of the time I flew Kingfisher recently.

It was a pleasant enough experience, though I found that the glam factor was rather over-stressed and over-hyped. The food tasted decent, though not as great as its GUI was made out to be. The periodic announcements were the best, crisp and clear; and the staff, quite courteous. However (hehe, and now we come to the negative part. Inevitable!) what set me thinking was this underlying chauvinism that seemed to pervade the air... the outfits of the cabin-crew (and why, to the best of my knowledge, were *all* of them female? Is this some sort of discrimination?) - though they undoubtedly looked glam and eye-catching and eminently presentable and all that, appeared to me, to be woefully lacking in terms of safety and comfort.

This actually got me thinking abt whether those crew members would be able to effectively help out passengers in case of mishap in the skies (and there are loads of those disasters just waiting to happen, apparently, going by this report) . Would they even be able to fend for themselves properly? One doesn't care to imagine oneself running from disaster, or bailing out, or even being stranded for hours in inclement weather conditions, or hijacked, in uncomfortable tight high-heeled shoes, or a mini! Perfect for a pleasant evening out, no doubt, but definitely not what one would want to be equipped with, during life-threatening situations.

And actually, it's not just this particular airlines; I see this disregard to safety and functional comfort, in most of those that I've used. Not one of them seems to have a staff uniform that's comfortable enough to withstand long hours of work aboard, and emergency situations.

I do hope this isn't some sort of human rights violation.. I mean, sure, what with all this cut-throat competition in the airlines business, I guess every little perceived means of providing for a pleasant experience and retaining clientele, is needed, but not at the cost of employee safety, one hopes. And I'm sure there are loads of talented designers out there who'd think of something creative and comfortable and chic at the same time, to come to the rescue of this workforce!

La mot juste

Resource:
1 a : a source of supply or support : an available means -- usually used in plural
b : a natural source of wealth or revenue -- often used in plural
c : computable wealth -- usually used in plural
d : a source of information or expertise

That's what Webster says, at any rate.
Unfortunately, this word now seems to refer to people as well, atleast in the industry that I work in.
Now I'm not particularly fond of going to great (and often ridiculous) lengths to sound politically correct, but I do believe in a reasonable amount of p.c. What surprises me is that I've not really come across any backlash over the usage of this term, to refer to real, live, thinking human beings working for an organization. It's so typically corporate, this attempt to avoid sounding human (and hence avoid human interaction and its underlying responsibilities, perhaps)... why couldn't they put their heads together and think of a word that sounds more personal - engineer, or professional, or team-member, or associate or even something as generic as people?

There was this person who came to take stock of my team and our current work recently, and she asked me, "So how many resources do you have?" And I was so tempted to say that we have three linux machines, a windows machine, three phones, and some amount of hardware and furniture amongst my group :-p.

I wonder why many corporates are so head-in-the-sand-ish about this whole human angle. I guess it's easier for them to think of contributors as objects (refer to 1.d above) so they can go about their sharklike businesses without that niggling little voice of conscience bothering them.
And I've noticed that, funnily enough, a lot of the smaller firms and start-ups do not use this word.
It probably sounds like I'm being a little too harsh on them corporate bigwigs (after all, "What's in a name? A resource by any other name works just as hard??" and all that jazz..) but libby-left that I am, I just can't help wishing they were a trifle more conscious of the environment (human and natural) that they operate in.

But wait, I came across a rather heart-warming mail recently.. posted it here.
And a happy new year 2006 to everyone out there!