Pet Peeves

The nominees for the Aishwarya Rai Award for the most Irritating Personality of the year are :

1) People whose cars have these automatic blood-curling sirens that destroy peace whenever their vehicles are in reverse gear. To make my miserable life even worse I have to live with the harsh reality of being woken up at 7:30 A.M every morning to the shrieking sounds of an instrumental version of an Annu Malik song. AN ANNU MALIK SONG. If that does not get Amnesty International to act, I don’t know what will.

2) Aishwarya Rai: She is so artificial that she would put Pamela Anderson’s breasts to shame.

3) The Australian accent and Navjyot Siddhu: I have clubbed them together because I can’t choose between the devil and the deep sea infested with sharks. One has to listen to all these marvels (perfection in a negative way is still perfection) of mankind to appreciate my feelings.

Suffice it to say that that Australia was a penal colony of Great Britain i.e. British convicts were sent to Australia. Clearly the convicts reformed themselves in Australia and restricted their crimes to murdering the English language.

Navjyot Singh Siddhu riles me even as I write. Actually, he beats the Australians hollow. Siddhu was known as the stroke-less wonder who improved his skills to be able to hit Bangladeshi spinners by swinging his bat such that the follow through would cause the bat to reach the boundary as well.

Moreover, he speaks in this artificial, bombastic tone with phrases/ similes that remind me of the Hardy Boys (Jumping Gemini fish, etc).

Siddhu seems to think that the simile and alliteration are the only 2 figures of speech. Some idiots think that Siddhu’s oratorical skills are Churchillian. I would bet my bottom dollar that he would not be able to pronounce awry, risqué and ingénue to save his life.

4) Beauty Queens: During the Miss World Contest, Priyanka Chopra was asked to name the LIVING person she admired the most, without batting an eyelid she answered Mother Teresa. This after MOTHER TERESA HAD BEEN DEAD FOR 3 YEARS..AND PRIYANKA CHOPRA WON THE GODDAMN TITLE.

5) Page 3 personalities: As a fervent capitalist, there is a part of me that has to accept this phenomenon. However, I hate the hypocritical nature of these people when they say that they are selective about the brands they associate with. Hey people, the only thing you are selective about is the bank account the money should be transferred to. Moreover, a vast majority of these people have as much talent so as to make Annu Malik seem like the second coming of Mozart.

6) Pushy sales people: I am specifically talking about people who work in the food and beverages industries. These guys make an attempt to up-sell so much that the day is not far off when the following exchange takes place:
Me: May I have a coffee with ice-cream please?
Intern: Would you like ice-cream with that sir?

7) Annoying habits: This deserves a section of its own but I will try (fat chance) to be succinct. So here goes:
Women hugging each other replete with a shriek despite the fact that only a week would have elapsed since their last meeting.
Women going to toilets together in pubs/restaurants. I don’t know but it seems weird..unless they are going for some sort of lesbian stuff, which the Freudian part of me finds fascinating.
Women making non-erogenous zone contact. Men like to be touched ONLY if it arouses them. Men making ANY sort of contact. Shaking hands being the honourable exception to the definition of contact.
Women forcing you to skip a sport telecast to watch 'Maid in Manhattan' or some crappy film/programme like that.
Women who insist on cleaning your cupboard, buying all sort of unnecessary stuff that only they will use like Dettol liquid soap, tissue paper, garbage bags.
People who substitute the Hindi word “ki” for "that" in a sentence that is otherwise constructed in the English language.
People who let the phone ring endlessly. I am no social scientist but one usually lifts the receiver when one hears a phone ring.

By,
Gaurav Kala