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Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
March 15, 2013
You know you are not wanted...
When you visit someone’s place without prior warning and they say oh what a lovely surprise and they look surprised and downright miserable.
You try to do a Friday brunch and no one accepts.
When they let you enter a party and don’t introduce you to the other people (largely because your name has slipped their minds).
When someone says, oh you must come over, we must get together very soon and neither tell you the time or the day or their address.
When you find your friends have had a party and then next day made a big thing of apologizing for having overlooked you.
When you find the hostess putting out extra plates on the dining table in your presence and the sit down becomes a buffet.
When you make a phone call and the line gets mysteriously cut mid conversation and you dial again and it’s now off the hook.
You know you are not wanted....
When the boss walks past your desk and doesn’t stop to say hello because, though you hate to admit it, but he doesn’t quite know who you are or what you do.
When the juniors take you out to celebrate their promotions.
When you’re the outgoing part of the streamlining process in the office, the manpower that’s being rotated, the debris of the optimum employment program, the item on the retrenchment list…worse, being relocated.
When you’re known to your superiors as that not too tall, not too short, neither fat nor thin guy with the funny moustache, what’s name, that chappie in Sales.
When you start telling people what you did during your vacation and everyone is suddenly busy, sorry can’t stop, some other time.
When a group in animated conversation springs apart suddenly when you come by and pretends nothing was happening.
When you call people over and have to keep ringing them up to remind them of the day and venue and you worry about their coming. And then only 20 come and say they have to rush off, catching a flight.
You know you’re not wanted...
When people give you gifts they do not want.
When people not only give gifts they obviously do not want but tell you how they chose them because they thought they suited you perfectly....which tells you in ringing tones what they think of your taste.
When you bank manager doesn’t bother to look up and acknowledge your arrival.
When a restaurant maitre de says awfully sorry we are all booked up and you know at least half the tables are free.
When nobody gossips about you when you are not around.
When you contact relatives abroad because you want to stay with them and they tell you they are going to Yugoslavia the same time you are coming.
When your immediate boss keeps telling you what a great future you have but does nothing to propel it anywhere.
When the host spouts the virtues of ‘early nights’ soon after dinner.
When you reach a pre-decided rendezvous on time and nobody else fetches up.
When you’re always the fifth at bridge.
When you are tired of sitting home every evening and finding virtue in it.
When you enter a party and the hum of conversation suddenly stops.
You are never in the front row for anything.
When the person next to you gets upgraded on a flight and you don’t, even though you had the contacts.
When you can’t get past somebody’s secretary because the person you want to speak with is always too busy or in conference or gone to Abu Dhabi or is in a meeting.
When secretaries say I'll have him call you back and he doesn't.
You know you are not particularly wanted...
The writer is a Senior Editorial Advisor of Khaleej Times and the paper’s former Editor. He has also been the Editor of Gulf News, Gulf Today, Emirates Today and Bahrain Tribune)
If my call is so important to them, why don’t they answer it for 22 minutes?
How come when I want to, but something specific online is the only item out of stock.
When I get into a queue or lane going fast, the moment I get in, it becomes the slowest and refuses to budge.
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