A March from the Past

Remember those army ads that they've been showing before the movies? The ones where there’s a doctor parachuting down a hill to save lives, or a woman is doing rock-climbing type adrenaline junkie stuff, all as part of their everyday jobs? The ones that go on to tell you that if you want to live a life less ordinary, the army is the place to be? I guess one of the reasons why the army puts out ads like these is to appeal to the privileged, bungee jumping, skydiving, river rafting, zip lining, swimming with the dolphins, maxing every moment, thrill seeking yuppie millenials bored with the humdrum state of everyday life. The sort who would share life-affirming travel quotes about how it broadens your mind and makes you a better person and teaches you life-lessons you’d never learn otherwise and why everyone should quit their jobs and spend their lives traveling because that’s the only way you can really be a complete person and yes it has nothing to do with privilege or the fact that travel is the new social currency for a generation that’s generally had it easier and therefore isn’t so hung up on that house or that car and likes to consider itself less materialistic.

Sure, there is all that, but the other reason for these ads is to undo years of damage that school education does to the ordinary child’s perception of army life. Seventeen-odd years of school life teaches you that you’ll be solving parabolic equations if you’re an engineer, balancing equations if you’re a scientist and marching all the time if you join the army. Of course there is a lot more to army life than marching, but that’s not what the schools would like you to believe. The only bit of army life that you were exposed to in school was the march past, which, to me, was among the most mind-numbingly boring and pointless things one could ever do. You’d spend hours toiling in the sun, getting yelled all manner of abuse because your arms weren’t stiff enough or rising up and down in unison with the rest of the group. And to what end? So that parents and a chief guest would land up on sports day and spend an afternoon that was equal parts mild tedium, gentle boredom and humdrum monotony. I mean, if there was some grander purpose to the march past, I may still have taken it more seriously. But to practice relentlessly for weeks on end, striving for pointless perfection, all for the purpose of 20 minutes of marching around a field that your parents couldn’t really care less about? It isn’t like they ever told me I marched brilliantly and would take me out for a special dinner, or would forgive other transgressions like low marks or getting into trouble. “Even though you flunked Maths and sneaked a cigarette into the bathroom, we’re willing to overlook that because by God, your marching skills are simply divine!”

The best that you can do through great marching skills, the absolute pinnacle of marching achievement, is to march during the republic day parade. In theory, this sounds like a big deal, but if you think about it, it really isn’t. It’s just a grander, adult version of sports day where you’ll be marching past a bored president and an even more bored visiting head of state. Yes, the whole country may be watching on TV, but really everyone’s just waiting for those motorcycle stuntmen to do their thing. Granted that everyone loves motorcycle stuntmen and there’s no shame in being overshadowed by them, but you’re also overshadowed by all manner of weapon systems and missiles, planes flying in formation, and, worst of all, a never-ending series of eccentric tableaus put up by each of the 29 states!

But coming back to the army, it wasn’t just schools that made the army look bad – it was Hollywood as well. Unfortunately for the army, we were the first generation that was exposed to Hollywood movies, and that didn’t help matters. Until it was just Bollywood, everyone would’ve been scrambling over each other to join the army. Army people were honest, patriotic citizens who fell in love with beautiful women, only to then get called to the border. But the affair continued in the form of long, passionate letters written in the midst of blowing up Pakistani tanks, performing acts of great heroism and forging immense bonds of camaraderie with your fellow army men. Who wouldn't want all that? You could really do no wrong by joining the army, was the general Bollywood consensus. With Hollywood though, the army was an entirely different cup of tea. You could see that your entire lineage would be insulted in highly colourful language while you were getting yelled at and being asked to crawl through a muddy trench and do a hundred push ups in the middle of a heavy downpour simply because an angry superior didn’t like your face and wanted to show you that he was the boss.

What better way, then, to remind you that the army isn’t just march pasts and getting yelled at than just before the start of a Hollywood movie? And if that doesn’t do the trick and get you to join, hopefully the national anthem right after will!

A New Low

This weekend, for absolutely no fault of mine, I got added to a What’s App group called the ‘UPS Battery Group’. In general, I treat with suspicion any What’s App group that has more than 10 members. These are the sort of groups that start with great fanfare and enthusiasm only to slowly degenerate into a junkyard for inane forwards and tired jokes. This one was different though – from the beginning itself it seemed to have no point to it. It was created out of the blue by someone that nobody knew, and everyone was flummoxed as to why they were added to the group.  However tenuous the link may be, most What’s App groups at least have a basis for formation that is more real – a group of old friends, batch mates from college, a tuition group or even ex-colleagues that used to go for lunch together. But here was one group where no one knew anybody, or had any lingering ties to UPS Batteries.

So all that was happening on the group was people were enquiring as to its purpose, and on not receiving any reply, quitting the group. One person was even polite enough to offer that he was open to being added back to the group if it so emerged that there was a point to it, but until such a stage he would stay out. So yes, everyone was either quitting the group or staying on it simply because they hadn’t found the time to quit the group. The sort of thing any sensible person would do in today’s hectic, fast-paced lifestyle.

But not me.

Why I didn’t quit the group right away, like I usually would, I do not know. Perhaps it was some sort of idle curiosity. I mean, a group for UPS batteries? Sure, people form artificial affiliations around football clubs or music bands or film stars – a What’s App group in their name would not have piqued my curiosity in the least. But what could one possibly discuss about UPS Batteries? Perhaps if it was a group on battery technologies in general, it may have been a little more understandable, although still perplexing (and just a little bit creepy). But something as specific as UPS Batteries? Sure, there may be other specific things, like say, toast, where you can imagine people forming a What’s App group and witnessing active participation and passionate arguments. But UPS batteries? Yes, they take care of voltage fluctuations and sudden power outages and we’re all thankful for that, but what more can you say? It’s like forming a What’s App group on water taps or door handles – move along folks, there’s really nothing to be discussed here.

After a while, though, even the idle curiosity began to die down. Much as I wanted to know the possible talking points around UPS Batteries, there were no answers forthcoming. A few hours later, with everyone still in the dark, I decided to take matters into my own hands and provide some direction to all the lost souls out there. Armed with the good sense that a couple of beers can knock into any respectable citizen, I jumped right in, attempting to make this a What’s App group that was full of lively banter and hectic activity.

And then the unthinkable happened – I got thrown out of the What’s App group! Imagine – getting unceremoniously removed from a What’s App group, of all things! And that too one that everyone was voluntarily leaving anyway. Even for someone without a great track record on social media, this was a new low. I’m sure I’m the first person ever to achieve this dubious distinction – people either leave What’s App groups of their own accord, or stay on simply so that others don’t speculate as to why they left. And I was only getting started – I was all set to initiate a discussion around everyone’s top 5 UPS Battery moments, where UPS Batteries would rank among things you’d rescue if your house was burning down, romantic moments that would’ve been ruined were it not for UPS Batteries, and so on.

In hindsight, I suppose it’s better off to not be part of a What’s App group that lacks a sense of humour and doesn’t allow for dissent. Still, from Groucho Marx proudly proclaiming that he wouldn’t want to be part of any club that would accept him as a member, to me getting thrown out of a What’s App group that NO ONE wanted to be part of – there’s quite a bit of work to be done on the social front!

Absolutely Jargonned!

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Tajikistan government’s decision to fine journalists for using incomprehensible words in their article. While governmental interference in matters related to grammar did not seem like a good idea at the time, something happened last morning that made me reconsider my stance. It was one of those jargon-filled emails that plague modern-day business correspondence and make you want to punch a nearby soft board in anger. If the Tajikistan government is going to get into the business of regulating language, I strongly advocate that it takes charge of all business communication around the world, and ban all incomprehensible words and jargon.

How often has it made you feel that you possess the IQ of a unicellular organism when you receive an email that goes something like this “The U&A study suggests that the 18-24 year old TG with ASL within normal parameters are 10% more likely to turn into zombies by EOD, as per weighted averages assigned post-facto.” All you can think of is “Wow, zombies! But what was the rest of the email all about?” Almost half the mails I get are sprinkled with a generous array of acronyms and jargon like EOD, PFA, scalable, hard stop, synergize and other, more obscure ones that I promptly forget once I find out what they mean. The companies should be help responsible for inflicting such boring language upon us, and it should be deducted from their profit margins as some sort of boredom infliction tax.

My instinct is to reply to such mails saying,

“Dear Corporate Middle Management Type,

Let’s assume that I know that you work in a highly specialized field that requires years of higher education and your job is one that cannot be done by any old nincompoop that you’ve just hired who happened to be walking down the street. Now that it’s out of the way, let’s talk in normal English instead of you ramming that point home all the time through the use of jargon.

Regards

Me”

Now, I know a lot of you might think that hey, this is the professional world and like all things professional, one cannot be anarchic when it comes to the use of language. But think about it – would it not be so much more interesting to receive an email that says “Hey man! Our brand sucks and the consumers don’t seem to give a shit. Hellllp!!!!” instead of the altogether more boring, but commonplace “The brand’s y-o-y sales figures reflect a downturn vis-à-vis the competition, with the brand scoring low on consumer indices of memorability and likeability, while scoring high on don’t-give-a-fuck-ability”?

Now, if the Tajikistan government is unwilling to take on this responsibility, a strong case could be made for the American government to be made in charge of corporate jargon. Not because the American government would make it fun, but it would at least make matters a little more interesting with its affinity for coining bizarre new terms. I mean, this was the same government that came up with the term friendly fire. Now, you might think that friendly fire refers to that warm, welcoming fire that burns away invitingly at a fireplace on a cold winter night, the sort of fire that you can really look forward to. But there’s really nothing friendly about getting killed by your own army, is there? Then of course there’s the more recent ‘Alternative Facts’. Again, like alternative rock, you might that maybe its some cool, different way of looking at facts, that there are two sides to every coin and all that. If you hadn’t known it already, you’d never guess that alternate facts are basically the same thing as outright lies.

The last person to be made in charge of corporate jargon, however, should be the Indian government. Any official, useful communication from the Indian government always sounds downright rude. The Indian government has the officious air of a strict headmaster who treats every student with a deep sense of mistrust and suspicion, knowing that they’re never up to any good. While the law may accept that you’re innocent until proven guilty, for the government you’re always guilty until you pay up. Every communication from the government sounds like the sort of threat the police might make to a hardened criminal, even when there’s no need to resort to threats. Take electricity bills, for example. Whenever I get a text informing me that my electricity bill has been sent, the government makes it sound like I’m some shifty low-life that has zero intention of paying them for electricity, even though I’ve always made it a point to pay on time. It’ll say, “Your bill amount is Rs XXX. Please treat this as 15 days disconnection notice, you lousy, freeloading, mooching, good-for-nothing excuse for a citizen”. I mean, I can understand if this was a follow-up text because I’ve exceeded the due date or something, but to resort to such threats as the very first line of communication seems a tad too aggressive. Periodically, the government will also threaten me because even though I’ve paid my Income Tax, I haven’t filed my acknowledgment of the government’s acknowledgment that I’ve paid my taxes (or some such similarly useless form that needs to be signed and sent only by speed post), and if I fail to do so then my tax returns will be deemed invalid! And if this isn't enough, just to retain the air of menace, the government also sends threatening messages that don’t even apply to me, to reinforce the point that the government is not one to be messed with, “Today is the last date to pay your service tax in case you’re a foodservice business. Heavy penalties and possible imprisonment could apply in case of late payment or non-declaration.”

Now, I don’t quite know how to end this post, so I guess it’ll just have to be a hard stop!