Mind your langauge

Though my parents made it a point that WE (Me n Bhai-bada bhai) go to the best of school in town and get the best of the angrezi education possible, they just could not do it. Not that they completely failed but the language grew faster than both of us combined together. But all kudos to them for they taught us everything including how to save ourselves from the burning humiliation that we had to go through every time we listened to that excessively disgracing (P.S. disgracing for us) YO and HIP and upbeat English of the times. But to my belief, these YO and HIP and upbeat English speakers (clarification: There is no such YO and HIP and upbeat English. This is my way of telling and letting people know THAT I KNOW) had a hidden agenda – camouflage the reality of what they actually are speaking; just like one of those fail Anu Malik shayari’s that he overplays and tries to hide the non-sensical bit of it behind the even more irritating yodeling that he does always. (FYIP: I have announced a Rs. 10,000/- grand prize to someone who kills Mr. Malik; believe me, that’s what a human life is worth for in India.Ref: Compensation for Bhopal Gas Tragedy victims).

So back to what I was actually writing. My office has several flat-screen televisions suspended on our walls. In order to stay on top of latest global developments, these TV sets are tuned to business and general news channels round the clock. And the moment a news story flashes across on any of the screens, watchful bosses leap out of their chairs screaming: “Oh my god! Dhoni got married or engaged or hooked or what ever or another CRPF battalion burned in another maoists attack.”

So one fine day (there are a few such days), I was walking past one such TV screen I heard a pundit on a business channel say something that almost caused my brain to explode. I don’t exactly remember what the gentleman said, but it was something like this:

“We expect range-bound intermediate mid-course upswings that will potentially go through a bear-flag phase before gaining momentum and testing the index’s upper support levels, at which point it will create a massive scalar elementary particle, as predicted by the Standard Model, known as a Higgs boson.”

I mean dude…What was that?? Was it the usual international forces trying their best to have me eliminated or what.

Mind Your Language...Believe me...Sometimes you really need to

Also, recently I got hold of some really weird emails. These were from a firms senior management to its employees. A communication from the CEO about salary hikes was written in the most ambiguous prose. The 300-word email spoke about how “increasingly compounding market pressures” and “supply-demand mismatches” were leading to a “short to medium-term rethinking of cash-flow prioritization” which could be reflected in the company’s “rewards mechanisms”.

This meant, of course, that all work ground to a halt while employees frantically flipped through dictionaries trying to decode the missive. The productivity loss could have only compounded market pressures.

What the CEO should have emailed instead is this:

“Dear employees,
Reg. salary hikes: ROFLMAO!
We’re broke. Please retweet.
Thanks, CEO”

Or else, the CEO could have told the employees how bad things really are, they might have had a panic and may also have though badly of him, his family or both, but they would not have said that you weren’t honest.

All I want to say is there can be a better way of communicating things. Sometimes the best use of language might force people to act in a funny and weird way. And specially, people like me, these so-called English language experts should especially take care of.

Ok…Thanks…Bye!!