‘On my way’ has to be the most commonly used text message ever, remarked a colleague a couple of weeks ago, as he checked his mobile for news of a tardy team member.
We smirked and settled down for a long wait.
‘On my way’ should constitute a punishable offence, not for the sender’s lack of punctuality, but for his or her lack of imagination. Come on, if you’re going to be late, the least you can do is to be entertaining. Not only will you keep our blood pressure in control (laughter being the best medicine as Reader’s Digest told us even before the dot com revolution was a dot on the horizon), it will actually help you become more truthful as well. All of us in Bangalore know that nothing is as entertaining as the truth.
For example, try ‘On my way to running down miniature acrobat sliding through giant earring’. The city’s best gymnasts aren’t at Beijing, they’re at every traffic signal in the city, gyrating and bobbing to give your text fingers fodder.
Or after a drizzle, you could text – ‘on my way out of Ulsoor lake which has cloned itself at Sadashiv Nagar. Instead of cursing you, those of us cooling our heels would spend the next hour comparing impromptu lakes we have braved in the past.
If you’re new to Bangalore and mms enabled, messaging solutions await you at every road sign. Besides dozens of signs that say ‘Hump ahead’ (it takes a newbie a while to figure out if this is an announcement or a request), road signs will always tell you exactly how far you are from various destinations. Of course you won’t know what those destinations are, as names of places are usually written in Kannada. Try ‘On my way to a series of marathon humps’ or ‘On my way to getting lost in translation’.
If you were about to say that you can’t punch in long messages while driving, save yourself the effort. All of us know sms lingo well enough to decipher that when you say ‘on your way’ you’re probably on your way to the rest room at the office.
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8 years ago
How about, "I can't make it because i'm on my way to...uh...Coorg?"
ReplyDeleteHee hee hee.
Australians have unknowingly been creativity-catalysts with their wholehearted "How are you goin?" greeting-the Aussie way of saying "Hi, How are you?". Responses, from the uninitiated, are usually anything from "in my mean machine that levels out all potholes on its way…." to "in my eco-friendly electric car that doesn't blacken the face of the scooterist behind me"! Doesn’t a staid "I am fine thanks" sound worse than ‘On my way” text messages??
ReplyDeletePerhaps, minutes prior to the meeting, chairpersons should be asking invitees, "Where are you and your thoughts wandering as I haven't seen you stroll into the meeting room yet?”