Pet Peeves & Christmas

Generally speaking, I consider myself to be a nice guy. But I do have my limits of tolerance and patience. Like most people, I have my own personal set of pet peeves. Most are perfectly justified. Some, maybe not so much.

Christmas in a couple of days means it’s time for forgiveness, giving and all that good stuff. So I’m going to call myself out on a few things that really get my goat to an unreasonable level and try my best to not let them bother me as much as they do. Let’s focus on three:

1. Bad apostrophe etiquette

Why oh why does this piss me off so much? Because I’m a Grammar Nazi, that’s why. I correct my friends, my family and my colleagues. I just lash out when I see bad grammar. The motive is probably altruistic. I want to help them be right. But what about when I’m walking past someone’s front door and I see “Shah’s” or “Singh’s” on a cheesy engraved plaque? Big deal, they’re wrong. But I have to stop letting it get to me. It really shouldn’t make a fuck of a difference to my life. No! There is no apostrophe in “books”! Grrrr….

2. Wrong elevator buttons

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there’s a large number of people in India who don’t know what button to push to call an elevator. There’s a belief in some quarters that if the elevator’s on the third floor for instance, you need to push the down button to call it down. No dude! That’s not how it works. If you want to go up, push up. If you want to go down, push down. Period. Breathe, Roopak, breathe. It’s really not that critical.

3. Mr. Roopak

No! It’s “Mister Saluja”. Mister goes with last name (or surname if you prefer calling it that). Never with a first name. Unless you want to sound like a 70s Hindi movie child actor, in which case “Master Pappu” is a great choice. Again, I really need to take it easy. I’m not likely to spend more than a grand total of five minutes of my life with this person. So let’s not judge them too harshly for not getting it right. Forgive them for they know not what they do.

I was toying with the idea of working on my aversion to sandalwood, rose and Nescafé. But that’s way beyond the scope of this initiative. It’s visceral. Physiological even. Not much I can do about it. And I’d prefer not to. Sandalwood and rose (the fragrance, not the flower) are vile. And Nescafé is just wrong. Not the way coffee was meant to be had.

And then there are all those annoying things I have no intention of being tolerant of- the Chalta Hai attitude, people being late for conference calls and acting like 11:00 and 11:10 are the same thing, grapes with seeds, the list goes on…but I have a flight to catch.

Merry Christmas!