Nine most useless things in the world

 

1.       Airline Announcements

 

Is there anything more useless than the announcement where the Pilot introduces himself and then rambles on “This is your pilot Arjun Chopra, ummmmmmm,  we are flying today to New Delhi, ehhhhhh, we are cruising at 30,000 feet, the temperature outside is 5 degrees below zero, anddddddd….. the skies outside are clear…”. All that goes in my mind that time is “I couldn’t care less about your name, I am not even going to see you. I know where the plane is going, you see I bought the ticket to it. I also do not care about the weather outside, inside I am going to open the fan vent even further because someone farted. And finally it is your problem how the sky is outside. I do not call and tell you how my network speed is when I am working, so I don’t appreciate about information on your working conditions.

 

Imagine if your Auto driver suddenly starts – “This is the Auto driver Ambarish Rangaiah, we are going to your house today, we are currently crawling in a traffic jam at 5 km/hour and for this I am going to charge you 20 Rs. Extra, It is hot, humid and polluted out here …..”. Nothing will drive you to murder faster.

 

2.       Inspirational Messages

 

What is the deal with them? Especially the ones that you receive in Whatsapp with a lame Good Morning tacked on at the end of them. Especially in India. Especially with photos of Sunrises or Flowers or Toddlers in the background. I mean we send more than 100 crore a day, we froze Whatsapp’s servers and Google had to put a special team to find out why so many Android phones in India were suddenly getting full and crashing.

 

What is the use of these messages? Does someone one day get up, see a message on Whatsapp and changes his whole perspective on life? Imagine waking up late, you are still sleepy and worried about the how painful the traffic is going to be now, your boss will crib that you are late, you are given impossible targets for your quarter and then suddenly your phone beeps. it is your Uncle who has sent you a message saying “All Birds find shelter during a rain. But Eagle avoids rain by flying above the Clouds. Good Morning”.  And you go - Eureka! So that is what I was doing wrong till now, instead of worrying about the traffic I should … I don’t know what… Maybe build a Quadricopter which runs on water to fly me to work and also helps me to create clones so I can do my work in time?  Moreover this text is not a text but words as an image with an Eagle or a mountaintop as the background and attributed to a famous person. Because sensible words matter more if they are an image and said by someone famous .

 

And don’t even get me started of the ultimate cowardly act of sending a message starting with “Forwarded as received…”

 

3.       Warning messages

 

I mean the diplomatic warning messages like on a plastic bag which says “This bag is not a toy”. The person who is going to use that as a toy is a two year old, he or she can’t read. It will not matter even it says “This bag is made from radioactive plastic which was previously used to store Anthrax spores” with a skull and crossbones sign on it. The two year old kid is still going to put it on his or her head and run around. It can’t possibly be for the parents either, if they do not understand the difference between a plastic bag that can choke kids and a toy without reading a warning level then they should take the Darwin award and remove themselves from the Gene Pool. And these parents are surely the same people who will disregard warnings of wearing a seatbelt while driving and wearing a helmet while riding, not to talk on the phone while driving, not smoking etc., but when they will see this warning and they will realize how serious it is and safely store away the plastic to recycle.

 

4.       Kitna bada ho gaya hai ye!

 

Isn’t the most useless bromide to lead with? You see a kid after 5 years and you are surprised that he or she has grown up? What were you expecting? For them to grow younger like Benjamin Button? You might as well start with any of the obvious truths like ‘The sun rises from the east’ or ‘Gravity exists’ or ‘I hate my boss’.

This useless sentence is followed by another equally useless sentence “The last time I saw you, you were so little” with a stretched palm measuring arbitrary distance from the ground. It is the exact same things. It like saying “oh you have a new black colored car, how nice” then following it with “the last time I saw you, you did not have a new car and it was red in color”.

 

5.       HR announcement and Town Hall meetings

 

They are like an election rally where people are forcibly sent to listen to stuff they don’t care about, but here you do not get even a biryani/saree/quarter to attend it, just an email from manager saying “Team, let us show high participation in the the Town Hall”. Then you drag yourself from your desk to wherever this is happening and listen to top management ramble on “We are showing very healthy growth in Middle East, we are up by 4%... blah blah blah …. Customer are giving very good feedback about .. blah blah blah… We need to invest more in Blockchain technology / Sustainable Buildings / Smart Cars / <Insert your Industry’s buzzword here> …. We are setting up new Champions / Intrapreneurs  / Agents of change / who will prepare our new go-to-market kill chain to amplify our return on relationship with our strategic customers (which basically means that some guy will do a lot of foreign travel on company’s money and come back with un-implementable plan)”

 

If you are not bored to tears till this point, then HR will take the stage and start “Guys, we have this initiative S.H.I.K.S.H.A or Strategic High Impact Knowledge Study on Human Aspirations. Mails have been shot out (because just sending emails is not good enough) to everyone, please finish the survey asap”. But you already zoned out and are checking Facebook on your phone and make a mental note of Shift+Deleting of this email when you see it.

 

6.       Photos of Housing Projects

 

You have seen them, haven’t you? And they always are the same - A tall, good looking man with his arm around his wife and sipping his tea with another hand, standing on his balcony from the top floor of the building, looking at the sunrise. This man is content, proud and impossibly young to afford a house of 1.3 crores + registration + tax + parking + higher floor surcharge + common space deposit + Preferential Locality Charge + brokerage + Interiors. And if this is not bad enough they slap on the most useless tagline on it – YOUR DREAM HOME.

 

Fuck this. My dream home is not a 2 bedroom, 950 square feet house which is 2 hour out of the city. My dream home is 60 room mansion has a view of the sea from one side, Times Square on one side, Alps on one side and one side has a view of my pool where porn stars are sunbathing topless.

 

If it was honest advertising they would write that this is the only house you can afford, that too barely by giving up all your savings, taking money from your parents and being neck deep in EMI for the next 20 years of your life. This balcony that you see in the ad will only be used twice in the day, once when you hang your wet towel and once when you come to put your clothes for drying. The only view you will see is other’s laundry drying or under construction buildings. You will never have time to sip tea with your wife because both of you will be working your ass off to pay the EMIs. Your kid will be in school till 4, then do homework, then have tuitions, the 1 hour of play time on his tablet; the play area and jungle gym will all go to waste, the club area will be hoarded by someone or the other having some religious functions and if office politics wasn’t enough you’ll have housing society politics.

 

7.       12 month gym membership

 

For once people should be realistic. These are the same people who want to try 5 different flavors of before buying ice-cream, want a free sample of shampoo before trying it, spray every deo bottle in the store before buying their usual brand. But for an activity which requires 2 hours of time per day, which is punishing, physically and mentally challenging, which requires a commitment of entire year and they have never ever done it successfully for their entire life; people are ready to dole out 20,000 Rs. Upfront.

 

Of course the gyms know it, one third of the 12 month members who take it as a new year resolutionists drop within the 1^st month, only 15% of all members in the gym come regularly. However this does not stop the gyms from putting the entire newspaper full of ads in January. Because they know the people who have difficultly controlling themselves in front of Gulab Jamun, pastries and onion bhajji will lap up their bullshit as well.

 

8.       Goa Plans

 

I don’t think this one requires any explanation. Just recollect your last conversation on a whatsapp group of your school or college friends when one of them was too drunk –

 

Drunk Bro - Bro, let’s all meet up once bro. It’s been so long since we’ve all met

The admin of the group - Yeah bro, we should definitely meet

Enthu Pataka of the group – Bol bhaai. Kab milna hai?

Drunk Bro – Bhaai jab tu bole. Bata kahan aana hai, bhaai haazir ho jayega

Bro 4 – Yeah man we should all meet at least once.

Admin – Let’s meet in Goa for new years, half way for everyone (Changes name of the group to Goa Plan 2018 with a bikini emoji)

Drunk Bro – Go Goa! (fifteen emojis with thumbs up, beer, beach , bikini, and various smileys in a jumbled manner)

Bro 4 – Oh Sorry Bro, December is little difficult for me, in laws would be here.

Enthu Bro – Oh Shit! December is year-end closing time in office, won’t be able to get leaves.

 

And then the entire plan goes down the drain

 

9.       Listicles like this

 

I think the only use they are is to prove that the author has no understanding of prose and structure and definitely no imagination at all