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06:47 PM
Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
June 17, 2015
We were at someone’s place the other day and this guest said, you don’t mind if I smoke, and proceeded to light up. But before he could flick the Bic the hostess said, as a matter of fact I do, this is a non-smoking house. There was an awkward silence and I was just thinking what fun if we could all be so honest. Now, instead of hugging and back-slapping people we cannot stand and pretending to be comrades in arms we could turn around and say, sorry, don’t like you, get out of my face.
On a plane tell the person next to you to stop nattering, I do not wish to speak with you, so stick to your air-space and stuff it. Delightful. Life would be so much happier.
Especially on the home front. I don’t want to go to this party, darling, because I don’t want to go, don’t like them, don’t like the people who will be there, that’s it.
The wife buys something expensive puts it on and pirouettes into the room and says, like it. No, you say, it is a thorough waste of money, the color is all wrong and if you wear this monstrosity- I am not coming with you, if the tag is not ripped off I strongly suggest you return it for a refund. That’s a thought.
Imagine someone saying, stop me if you have heard this one and you, stop, stop, stop and you get away with it. I believe we exhaust so much energy and time being nice and tolerant and all we are really doing is engaging in a gigantic fib.
See yourself at a company meeting. The MD is saying, so that’s my game-plan, anyone have any comments, go on, criticize it, break it down, folks, don’t mind me, I want you to be honest. So while everyone else is raising it to the level of Everest and piling on the manure you say, well, Sir, now that you want the truth let me just say this to you, the idea stinks. The boss laughs and says, really.
Start dusting your CV, mate
I tell you we’d all be a lot less stressed in the long run and much happier if we could truly voice our feelings. Then nobody would sneer at you if you didn’t like the latest ‘intellectual’ bestseller nor would they laugh out loud if you said your idea of a good read was Ed McBain. You could then cheerfully confess that you never understood Birdman even if it won the Oscar and you think that splotches of paint on canvas is not art and screaming on top of your lungs is not music and making boring films is not expressionism, so there, hard cheese, take it or leave it.
(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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