In brief...

No, no...This post is not about people wearing short clothes. I have nothing to say about the clothing preferences of people, however brief they might be. Who am I to judge anyone but myself? There are already enough people shooting their mouths off and giving the world their well researched 'gyan' on what people should wear and what they should not wear, and what catastrophe will befall the world should their prophetic words be unheeded!  I’m not that learned and hence you get to be spared of my sermon. 

(Breathing a sigh of relief, are you? Not so soon, people… *lets out an evil laugh… Buhahahaha…)

Well, coming back to the post, this is also not about those briefs that managers give their subordinates and expect them to dish out an extraordinary performance merely on the motivation obtained from those brief words! I have been subjected to many such briefings in the span of my corporate life. In between a gloating, self pompous, all-knowing manager (obviously, with a puffed chest, soaking in the thought of himself being the best, the most inspirational and motivational speaker since Zig Ziglar) at one end and a sleepy employee (trying his best to put up a moronic smile and nod on his face) at another, is a brief, which by the way, is anything but brief, telling you what a cakewalk it would be to achieve your monthly budgets should you follow their briefings to the ‘T’. How foolish of  you to think your effort had any part in achieving those demonic numbers!

But anyways, this post is not about that too. I guess, the beginning should have kind of set you up for what is to follow.

The point that I'm referring to is a kind of disability that people like me face on account of their inability to talk in brief. I guess the term nineteen to a dozen was coined just for me! I cannot even 'think' in brief. How in the world am I supposed to talk or write in brief? I was a child wonder if you can call me that. Some kids become dancing masters at a very young age, some become cricketers or turn out to be exceptionally high IQ kids. I turned out to have the gift of the gab. I was one of those kids who got full marks in essays- something that was totally unheard of. But I ensured that I compensated for the high score by scoring a zero in précis writing! 

I belong to that tribe who painstakingly types out every letter of every word checking for grammar even as I type out a message on Whatsapp or Messenger. I am not a grammar Nazi but it disturbs me greatly when people type something like, ‘wud u lyk 2 jn m 4 lnch tmrw.’ What? Is it a fad to swallow your vowels? So hungry, eh? A conversation with a younger cousin had me thinking if I was indeed growing old, or was I plain stupid!

What are you doing? I typed.

Cousin: ‘ATM LMBO

Me: What?

Cousin: At the moment, laughing my butt off

Me: Why?  

He forwarded me some joke I couldn’t really comprehend.

Me: What’s so funny?

Cousin: NM

Me: Huh?

Cousin: Never mind. (And then…) BRB

Me: What?

Cousin: Be right back…

Me: Sure

Cousin: K

I didn’t want to ask him what K meant, but he replied back instantly,

Cousin: Okay :-P

By the way, the ‘K’ is a part of almost all conversations. Any question can have ‘K’ as the answer or reply. It is like that ubiquitous aaloo (potato) that can find its way into almost any cuisine. Conversations like these make me imagine a mason building a house, who lays every fourth brick and leaves the gaps in between unfilled. So much for conversations!

The only abbreviations I remember using is “etc” and yea, maybe, 'ok'. And then I learnt LOL and ROFL. But the list just seems to be growing longer each day and I’m not sure I can keep up with it any longer! 

Thankfully I knew what it meant!

By the way, if you haven't seen it yet, the "about me" page on this blog also looks like a complete blog post!! Someone puhleeese teach me the art of brevity!! My husband often jokes that my Facebook status updates look like a complete blog post by themselves! Well, maybe that explains why I couldn’t embrace Twitter thus far. 140 characters? Really? Not even 140 words…just characters! What am I supposed to say in so few alphabets? 

It is like telling a person to just put the key in the ignition, start your car but not drive it! Or just ordering the appetizers and forgetting about the rest of the meal. It is this insatiable appetite that makes me hungry for more and forget all about brevity. 

By the way, I hope you are still listening!!