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01:14 PM
Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
April 17, 2014
Have you noticed when you take your car in to the mechanic that ‘tkkkk tkkkk’ sound in the engine towards the left which was irritating you stops going ‘tkkk tkkk.’
There you are saying, now listen, here it comes and the mechanic and his assistant cock a ear in anticipation like they were about to hear Beethoven’s Fifth symphony and the car, the car promptly let’s you down. At that very moment it begins to purrperfectly…yes, that is written as one word, that word is designed by me, it has my name on it, okay, so live with it.
After about three minutes of you telling them now watch, now wait, now hear and nothing happening, the mechanic says he can’t hear any ‘tkkk tkkk’ sound and he and his assistant slough off leaving you feeling wretched and foolish.
Ten minutes later as you get onto the highway hello, there it comes, ‘tkkk tkkk’, loud and clear.
Do not fret, you have been a victim of IOBHALOTO. This is a rare and ancient affliction with its genesis deeply embedded in the beginnings of time. It attacks only mankind and there are no symptoms except for extreme stress. It stands for Inanimate Objects Have A Life Of Their Own. Now, most of the human race goes through life never realizing that they are victims of Iobhaloto (pronounced eye-oh-bha-loto) almost on a daily basis.
For example, the moment you need your keys, any keys, they manage to disappear. Thanks to conditioning and the conspiratorial lies of advertising you believe you have misplaced them. I ask you, do the odds favor this happening nine times out of ten. Nonsense, Iobhaloto moves those keys as surely as if they were fitted with GE aero engines.
Have you ever looked for a pen when you need to write a number down on the telephone. You think there isn’t a master plan behind the way they vanish at that very point. Come on, grow up, face the fact, those pens have conspired with the pencil stub without a point (the only writing implement you will find as you hang onto the long distance caller) to put you in this state.
Look at can openers and bottle openers and their commitment to causing you deep stress.
It isn’t only in disappearing that IO’s win hands down. They are aces at bad timing. Buttons break at crucial moments, zips get stuck, high heels come off as you enter important meeting, cups crack up, clasps get jammed, laces snap, drawers refuse to budge and knob comes off the door and into your hands. And while all this victimization is going on we have the arrogance to call these items inanimate.
They are about as inanimate as a frisky foal. I have a scientific basis for my theory. Everything has an energy field, right. Even that malevolent jam jar cover that won’t follow the arrows and unscrew as you go red in the face. Now, if we accept that then we have to accept the logical assumption that these energy fields, like high decibel sounds, may be beyond our capabilities to identify them but that does not mean they don’t exist.
Ask yourself why the gas cylinder deliberately goes onto empty one hour before guests arrive? Why do you get a flat tyre the day you are late for work? Why is your flight always the one that is late?
Listen to me, they are out there, thousands of these seemingly innocent items, pretending to be benign but they are out to get us, they want to get even. How do I know why, I don’t know everything but I do know this, if they weren’t after us, how come I can only find one sock every time I go look for a pair. Where did the other sock go, you tell me that, calling me paranoid, you’d be paranoid, too, if you had 16 single socks.
(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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