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01:23 AM
Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
March 17, 2013
Did it strike you that yesterday was the Ides of March? Like when Lady Luck has a bad hair day and gets even with you for all your power and pelf. And if you don’t know the meaning of pelf, hard cheese.
Caesar learnt it the hard way, like his buddies ganged up against him and I think that’s how we got the phrase ‘the night of the long knives’ but then, Brutus shoved the stiletto in daytime when the Senate was in session so maybe that isn’t the genesis. But it did underscore how friends can be ‘et tu’ and nasty and we have all felt the sharp edge of betrayal by abovementioned buddies, like they break bread with you and then go and do the dirty behind your back or in it? Like they say keep your friends close to you and your enemies even closer…same difference. That’s the problem, they are interchangeable and most of us are suckers for being liked and loved and so we hold great store by these friendships coined in the vat of expediency.
And then we wake up one morning, confused and bewildered because we have been knifed and sliced and diced and we cannot understand how friends could do this because they were friends. And it doesn’t have to be March 15, it can be any of 365 days and you can be the recipient of affection gone sour, like that half bottle of milk in the fridge that sends out rancid fumes when you unscrew the top.
Then we are angry and hurt and can’t understand it and we never figure out that the fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves that we choose unwisely and without thought, after which we regret at leisure.
Ask yourself. How often have you been at the receiving end of ingratitude? How often have you sat there bleeding (metaphoric, my friend) incredulity because your confidante took your confidence and aerosoled it to the world. How often have you been dumped and drained away, sluiced because you lost a job, your wealth, your silly plastic status symbols, so that now you are no longer worth knowing. Tell us about it...what is your armor, how do sidestep treachery of the unexpected source.
And as with Caesar, it does not matter if the soothsayer warns you. We never listen, we never hear or spot the warning signs, not because they are not there but because we do not want to notice them.
Et tu, for sure.
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)
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