A walk in the clouds.. » Eight simple rules

Friday, October 7, 2005

12:30 AM

How does one flirt with a blogger? — asked a friend and blogger recently. No, the question was not about flirting with me, so don’t get all terribly excited about living vicariously through my online love life. That day too might come, but this is not that day. Now one thinks of herself as the supreme expert on all matters of pointlessness, so one couldn’t possibly just say — I don’t know. So one thought. And since one couldn’t come up with a good list of do-s, instead one thought of a bad list of don’t-s. Things to avoid during the getting to know each other song-and-dance routine. The men, I’m sure, have their own take on this. All names are fictional, including mine.

Hello, I am Bhuvaneshwar Chandra Shrivastava — When introducing yourself, don’t use your middle name. I understand that mommy named you with a great deal of love and daddy is very proud of his sonny boy, but the girl in question is not going to be impressed by the length of your name. In this case, size does matter. The prospect of talking to her might seem as formidable as a job interview, but it is not one. And if she is a prospective boss, you probably shouldn’t be hitting on her in the first place.
Hello, I am a boy — No no no! NO! Don’t explicitly state that! Let it be apparent from your email. And if you have to state it, for the love of God, please do NOT refer to yourself as a boy. A guy maybe but not a boy. Boy is not macho. Bond didn’t set his martini down, turn to the drop-dead gorgeous babe next to him and say ‘Boy. I am a boy.‘ Yep, there was a darn good reason for that.
I would like to make friendship with you — The most famous of all cringe-worthy sentences. Credit her with the sense to realize that you are not sending her an email to discuss the price of tomatoes. Unless she is a tomato-farming blogger, in which case that might be a good way to start a conversation. But I digress. The intent to know her more is already apparent in the sending of the email. You are writing to ‘get to know her’ not to ‘make friendship’ with her.
Hello Swati, I would like to be friends — What is wrong with this one, you ask? Nothing, except that it was a mail sent to Megha. Yesh, I understand that the same email is being sent out to forty-six women. Higher probability of success, power in numbers and all that. But if you are going to do such a poor cut-paste job that you forget to change the name of your object of affection .. tsk tsk.
What is your good name? — I remember my granddad telling me this was the polite way to ask a lady her name. Fair enough, but over the years it seems to have acquired a creep factor it did not have in dadaji times. Very lecherous A K Hangal types. Most disturbing. So pliss to skip.
I’ll w8 4 ur reply — This one’s a bit unique. I personally don’t get too excited about the shorthand SMS way of speaking. It’s okay in SMSes but it bugs me in an email. But I know women use it as much as men, so perhaps this one might help you connect with the gal in question, provided she uses it too. And may God bless the union of such like-minded souls.
Email me pleeeeeeeeeeez???? — Argh! Drop the desperation, it is most uncool. No I am not asking you not to be desperate. By all means be so. But please to not make it apparent to the girl in question! She will write back if she wants to. And if she doesn’t want to, I highly doubt she’s gonna say “I wouldn’t have ordinarily replied, but since you said please (with eleven Es and four question marks) I decided to make an exception in your case.”
OK? Byeeeeee!!!!!! — This one I seriously don’t get, no matter which way I look at it. What is the guy trying to say with the OK? OK, I hope you understood that I am trying to hit on you? And what’s with the byeeeeee? Cheerful wave from a distance? Pretence of coolness? And the multiple exclamations are to indicate how excited he is to be writing the email? Gaaah!

Before we make ourselves scarce, a few words of wisdom. As some of you know, we take the advice of our guru Ajmeri Baba rather seriously. And he once told us that our USP is our special brand of mindless nonsense mixed with pseudo-seriousness. Pliss to notice the pseudo part. So keeping with tradition, this is yetanudder of the ‘have blog, will blab‘ type posts. In this case, one hopes that one has given her readers enough lines to read so they will not have to resort to reading between them. OK? Byeee!

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Friday, October 7, 2005