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03:48 PM
Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
April 24, 2013
The reckoning cometh.
Use a word like ‘cometh’ and you immediately give out the signal that you are refined and educated and impressively pedantic. I know people who go that sort of absurd adornment for simple sentences to silence other people. They’ll say that one needs to ratiocinate a little before arriving at a conclusion and you’ll sit there looking fatuous and wondering what on earth it means.
I am all for ratiocinmating if you tell me what it means. They say things like ‘increasing exponentially’ or ‘subliminal satisfaction’ and ‘mission critical’ you never really know what the heck it means except that it is very impressive.
I was once asked what my USP was and I hadn’t a clue so said it is still up in the air, the jury is out on that one. Think I got away with it. The same day I was told by the fancy schmancy new MD that synergy was very important between Marketing and Editorial and I thought the only grease we needed was to heartily loathe each other, what was this synergy thing, never had it when we were youngsters. Then the boss said, go for the low hanging fruit. What, we run a paper or are cherry pickers?
This morning one of the papers has a whole page on NCDs but at no stage does it tell you what NCD stands for. So I am half reading the medical piece and sort of half guessing it must mean non-communicable diseases.
Others of the ilk use foreign language. Ipso facto, it is the caveat emptor clause that negates the submission, c’est la vie.
Okay, if you say so, I’ll buy it but I have no clue what I am buying.
Then you have three Indians sitting at a table saying, ‘Salud’ as they have a drink. Sal…who???
Then you get those who pepper their conversation with quotes. You are making this very telling point in your own fractured language and telling it well when this person will say, oh you are going by the Proust theory, it is interesting but Nietsche said it more eloquently. They are dead, Sir, and who invited these two to the party?
Put that in context.
(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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