Saturday, July 25, 2009

Got the gist and missed the twist?

For some people, sophistication and subtlety start with Z. One of the specimens happens to be a colleague of mine, who has this habbit of saying, "chalo gandi baatein karte hain" before the start of every bitching session in office. No I am serious, the guy actually says it, word for word which somehow reminds me of All India Radio, and indeed one day, when one such session was about to begin, I heard someone saying, 'Yeh "Dusht Bank" hai, ab aap XYZ se "Gandi Baatein" suniye' . In fact it sounded like my own voice, but I won't be too sure you know; "The Box" keeps reminding me that I am a hallucinatory freak anyway.

Well, whatever I said till now was unintentional blabbering; but admitting that doesn't necessarily guarantee that I would be talking about Einstein's Relativistic Mechanics or British Metaphysical Poets of the 17th Century for the rest of the post. In fact, the blabber might actually get worse....or verse for that matter- I don't know or care for at this moment.

The next moment, as you can see for yourself isn't very revealing either.

Well, before you start cursing me for the 60 seconds of your life that I have just wasted-if it was more than that, either you are hopelessly dyslexic or work in an office where this is the only website which has not yet been firewalled- I quickly force one Pan Dimensional Intergalactic Blabber Blaster capsule down my throat and come straight to the point.

I have always liked people who like to be subtle even when the need of the hour is to be direct, like someone who would prefer to say "resist your temptations to scream" (Woody Allen in The Curse of Jade Scorpion), when simply saying "don't scream" would be sufficient and more importantly necessary to stop the person from showing the inside view of the ugly pair of tonsils he is having with a lot of noise to go with it.

When people say what is the use of saying something subtly, when the more direct version of it means the same thing, it irritates me to the core. How would they like it, I ask if they go to watch a movie with their favourite stars in it and in the very first scene Mr Director appears with the entire crew and says, "OK. So this movie is about a good guy, a bad guy and a girl(whose goodness or badness is to the movie what existence of God is to an agnostic person). In the end the bad guy gets killed/jailed, and the good guy gets the girl.". Whoa! Brilliant I say! The entire movie of 2-3 hrs explained in less than 2 minutes. What is the use of sitting through all that dhishum dhishum and heehee hoohoo for 2-3 hrs for every movie, if 90% of the movies can be shown in this way!?

A couple of years back, I had read an article somewhere, where the author ridicules the omnipresent phrase, "getting the gist". I've forgotten all about the article but I liked the idea. The idea is not just to understand/convey the gist but much more. I am afraid I am not able to express it as clearly as that author did, but you got the gist, did't you? :)

The pledge

This being the first post of this brand new blog of mine, main Geeta (seeta, nita aur rita if they too are dying for having this priviledge) par hath rakhkar kasam khata hoon ki main yahan jo likhoonga time-pass* likhoonga.

In a Hogwartish nutshell, I solemnly swear that I will be up to no good.

*Conditions Applied.

*Condition- Time paas hoga(mere) tabhi time-pass hoga(tumhara), ok?