Thank you for your patience. Please hold the line. Thank you for your patience. Please hold the line. Thank you for your patience. Please hold the line. Thank you for your patience. Please hold––

Regular readers of this blog (just kidding; there are none – not even me) may remember my long-standing beef with the aviation industry and the People Formerly Known as Air-Hostesses/Hosts and the sneaky name changes they keep springing on us unsuspecting civilian passengers. There’s also the scorn and contempt I have for call centre ‘executives’ which has been an overarching theme in my evidently not very entertaining life. As luck would have it, now I’m being forced to take a little from here and a little from there to bitch about a new discovery.

I needed the number of a particular restaurant that delivers halfway decent butter chicken by the city’s very low north Indian culinary standards. My protest against smartphones and BBM and Whatsapp and being always connected and always manipulating touchscreens in public is still going full steam (plus eternal poverty), which is why I can’t access internet on my archaic cell phone without using a dated and dreadfully slow GPRS technology which would make the best of us cringe. Inevitably, I was forced to call up that information selling enterprise that also sometimes assists the general public with a few phone numbers and addresses. I can't reveal the name of this very well-known company for legal reasons (actually, I don't know if I can be legally implicated for taking their name but it's funnier this way).

So I justdial this company that I can't name for legal reasons. Firstly, credit where it’s due – someone from their call centre usually answers with a jovial greeting before even the first ring. But in this instance, there was a good five-to-eight second delay, which was a little unsettling. Nevertheless, the guy at the other end of my phone call did answer. He couldn’t find the restaurant information that I had asked for, so he put me on hold for a few seconds.

A little after the automated lady voice told me how important my call was, she happened to mention that “Our officers will be with you shortly. Thank you for your patience.” Officers? OFFICERS?

This needs to stop. I will not, no matter how insignificant this entire thing is, ever refer to the chaps who give me numbers and addresses of restaurants and give out my phone number to thousands of plumbers and electricians and key-makers as Officers. First of all, they don’t even have an office (not that I do, either). But they work out of a call centre – that’s very different. I can’t even call it a BPO out of the goodness of my heart because it’s not one. It’s most likely just an information-selling racket with a CSR programme that gives out numbers and addresses to callers. And what makes them deserving of being called Officers? Even our finest khaki dimwits aren’t worthy of that particular distinction, but that’s a can of worms that’s best left unopened.

Conclusion: I hate myself for saying this but I yearn for the good old days where these guys were happy living in their little bubble of all-night dhabas and calling themselves Executives. Or I could always just let this one go - chalk one up for dignity of labour or something.

The How-to Guide to Writing for the Internet

There’s obviously a loose template somewhere out there, which is why everything on the internet reads the same way. There has to be. And over time spent staring at my laptop screen, I’ve noticed that writers tend to fashion their pieces a certain way, latching on to collective quirks to lure unsuspecting readers into believing they’re having fun reading the thing. In the spirit of full disclosure, here’s me attempting to Wikileaks contemporary online writers.

1.      Drop Current Affairs References and Verbalize Them: Wikileaks isn’t strictly ‘current affairs’ but notice how I used it as a verb recently? Also: Verbalize. And Facebooking.

2.      Make Lists: A lot of people unfairly accuse writers of holding their readers in contempt by oversimplifying everything via lists; that they think their readers suffer from shallow attention spans. That’s expressly untrue. The real reason lists are so common is because it’s the writers themselves who have short attention spans and because there hap.

3.      Use A Straw Man Argument: “A lot of people unfairly accuse…” etc.

4.      Excessive Use of Irony: Sarcasm is too immature while sincerity happens to be really difficult to express and far beyond the scope of the average Joe. Lying in between is that special kind of feckless irony that’s the sole preserve of the budding online writer. It comes with either A) not having a clue what irony really means, or B) not being too sure what the purpose of its use is in context to the piece being crafted, or C) all of the above. It’s a postmodern conundrum is what it is.

5.      The Hipster Fixation: Call anything that pisses you off or you find threatening a ‘hipster’.

“The F7 key on my laptop is a fucking hipster.”

“My cook made black dal today instead of yellow dal; bloody hipster woman.”

“My hipster building has really old Schindler’s lifts.”

*As an aside, isn’t it time we – as dedicated consumers and self-professed content generators on the internet – begin phasing out use of the word? It’s been done to death and its overuse without any real context has pretty much blunted any potential impact it may have had – positive or negative – to begin with. I’ve personally tried using ‘coolcat’ or ‘hepcat’ on multiple occasions but it doesn’t seem to be catching on.

6.      “Self-Awareness”: In the real world, there are certain personality quirks that help one identify someone as being “self-conscious”. Online, that same thing passes off as being “self-aware”, which is considered quite cool. Less flattering terms include puffery and flash.

7.      ([{Over-punctuate}]): Usually; In-correctly…

8.      Excessive Use of Overdone Catchphrases: True story. Because nothing collects a herd quite like a dog whistle. Just sayin’. Keep calm and be ironic.

9.      Supposed Axioms and Clichés: Let’s all get together and rhapsodize about bacon wrapped in Nutella because nothing better has or will exist and fuck heart patients, diabetics, vegetarians, certain faiths but not all of them, and also people with different taste. Cue hilarious one-liner about bacon that makes it 2legit2quit.

10.  Be Meta: This is a two-step process: First, look up the word meta on an online dictionary and then be it.

11.  Name Drop TV Shows to Fit In: The so-called cerebral ones, particularly. For e.g., Community. It used to be Arrested Development earlier, which I happen to love. So I’m going with Community and its trying-too-hard-cockiness.

12.  Shift-F7 to Sound Intellectual or Witty: This is best used in conjunction with when the writer has no real point to make to begin with.

Exhibit A: I’m against corruption but I pay traffic cops a bribe when I jump a red light or talk on my cell phone.

Exhibit B: The act of corruption is preposterous and, fundamentally, it happens to be a direct consequence of a greed-infested world imbibed with values of capitalism, blind profit, and materialism, with blatant disregard, contempt even, for the true warriors – the working class. Power to the people and down with the government. Ultimately, the need of the hour is to destroy the multiple layers of protection enjoyed by the gentry, instead of focusing our collective energies fighting the little man paying a miniscule amount to get out of a speeding challan. That’s just a microcosm of a larger predicament, and unimportant in the grand scheme of things, especially when there are Coalgate (ugh) and 2G scams happening at the very top levels of our administration.  

Spot the difference. Although, in fairness, writers tend to get paid on a per-word system, so the more the merrier.

13.  Use of Tortured Analogies and Comparisons for the Sake of Contrived Comedy: “I had a dog when I was fourteen and in braces and I was applying acne cream four times a day. The dog ran away. I popped all my pimples that day. Eight years later, I discovered the internet, went on Stumbled Upon, and stumbled upon a video called 2 Girls, 1 Cup. That was far better than watching this government try to scam its way through its tenure.”

14.   Being Self-Referential: Refer to Point 10. That’s me being meta and self-referential.

15.  Overuse of Rambling Qualifiers, Colloquialisms, and Slang: This is just a sluggish attempt at sounding hip and cool (which leads to sounding smug often). For e.g., phrases like “like, y’know, you know, pretty much, really, really, etc.” Thanks a fuckton for that, David Foster Wallace. You’ve managed to inspire a generation of slacker wastoids to believe they can get away with lazy writing* by, like, sort of adding some colour and character. Also thanks for presaging Facetime video conferencing some 15 years before it happened. 

*Wallace is one of my favourite writers actually, and here's a piece that, while unnecessarily critical and contrarian, tries to explain this phenomenon. 

16.  Drop Token Infinite Jest Reference: See above.


(Not to say I'm not guilty of all of these, often together.)

An Impassioned Plea to Those Flight People: Pick A Name, Please

I’ve always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the world of aviation. Love because it gets me places. But I’ve had many well-documented (documented by me, of course) concerns and peeves about the industry – right from airports, ground staff, the planes, to all other associations and beneficiaries. So no surprise then that the fire’s been stoked again. This time, it’s those people who tell you to sit up straight, hand out food, and give you instructions on what to do in an emergency. In other words, the Professionals Formerly Known as Air-Hostesses/Hosts (PFKAHs).

I’ve always quite liked these PFKAHs (except for this one aged cow who once ‘forgot’ to serve me lunch and then taunted me by asking why I wasn’t eating). Other than that one, they’re all pleasant, warm, cheery, and they’re your one-stop solution for F&B. And it’s a job that can get tedious too – you can never step outside for lunch, for starters (unless you’re in Paris, maybe), and you have to do that annoying audio-visual instructional routine like three hundred times a day. Plus they’re trained to resuscitate people, tend to pregnant ladies, and so on, so there’s that benefit in case of emergencies. So they’re respectable people doing jobs that, while glamorous, are also just as competitive and challenging as most other professions. If anything, my problem inside airplanes is with those potentially drunk/sleeping wannabe RJs otherwise known as pilots, but let’s leave that for now.

Coming back to PFKAHs, several years ago, they changed their names. They didn’t like ‘Air-Hostess/Host’, which I found a bit odd because ‘Host’ has such a comely and welcoming intonation to it. But I think it was to dispel misguided notions that they were simply glorified waiters or busboys. Or maybe some reason I’m not quite aware of. So they called themselves ‘Stewards’. Not that I know what that means outside of an airport context, but fair enough.

You may have guessed where I’m going with this but I’ll spell it out nevertheless. Within three months of that name change, I found out that calling them stewards/stewardesses was also politically incorrect and frowned upon – it’s like how cell-phones keep going out of fashion; they’ll add a new letter at the end of an old model and you’re suddenly redundant and outdated. So like the 1x or the 1xPlus or the 4S or the 3390HD, these guys were now asking to be called ‘In-Flight Attendants’ or ‘Flight Attendants’.

Very cool, I thought. Another name change, but a definite upgrade, since ‘Attendant’ has that elegant professional aura that ‘Physician’, ‘Consultant’, etc. also have.

Fine, I still call them different variations of all of the above because, honestly, I don’t see the difference and I don’t get the fuss. But it is after all their profession and they all seem like very nice and kind people and they have the upper hand because they’re the ones who control my safety and comfort in airplanes and it’s just a word at the end of the day so fine: Fine, I shall call them In-Flight Attendants or Flight Attendants or Space Cowboys/girls or Aviation Sergeants or Aeronautical SkyDrivers or whatever they want.

But then, on my most recent flying experience, I discover that they want to be called ‘Flight Executives’ now…? What the hell?

When people ask me what I do, I say I’m a writer. Sometimes I say I’m a journalist. Other times I won’t. I don’t care whether they call me a writer or a scribe or a reporter or a paparazzo or a hack. I may sometimes correct them if they think I write for television or films but that’s about it, and that too rarely. Because who cares? Does anyone know what any finance guy in the world actually does? (Saying ‘number-crunching’ is ruled out for obvious reasons.)

--

I’m putting my foot down. I will not call them Flight Executives. And that’s not because they are or aren’t Flight Executives – that’s beside the point and maybe in their heads they really are.

I won’t call them Flight Executives because there’s no such thing that exists. It’s completely made up; it’s a hoax. You cannot keep inventing new professions as and when you please, while the job description remains static. The thing is, you’re the ones who’re making up all these flashy names, not us civilians. Please, enough of this madness; let’s just all sit together, develop, like, a huge thinktank with the finance guys and the ‘consultants’ and the ‘facilitators’ and the ‘strategists’ and the ‘policy’ guys and just decide on a final name once and for all, with no ‘Executive’ in there anywhere.

(Of course, if this is a feminist thing where the real issue is the gender-neutrality of job designations, then I concede that that’s a subject far beyond the scope of this blog, and not something that’s going to be dwelled upon even briefly here.)

And honestly – and I really want to know this – what does ‘Executive’ even mean? It’s a frivolous suffix with very little weight.

Epilogue: Maybe I should ask the next call centre ‘executive’ who calls me up but I don’t even want to think about the trauma that’ll involve: “Thank you for holding, Sir, my name is Steve Smith Jones. Before I answer your question, I would like to ask you if you are happy with your cell phone plan and your internet plan and your housing scheme and your credit card facilities and your bank. After that, I will go through my preset answer booklet and surely tackle your query at the earliest. Oh, and would you like to donate money for a charity helping underprivileged children and if not then why, Sir?”