When was the last time you met / interacted with a pot bellied, bearded, balding excuse of a man, speeding dangerously downhill – someone who is derisively termed an “Editor”? Yes, I’m talking about the ones whose names “drive the fear of God” in rich and the mighty of the land. Men, who are appeased by bribe givers and takers cutting across party and factory lines. Men whose sermons, on all matters irrelevant, are lapped up by drunken men of equally antediluvian origin through mists of single malt in the hallowed portals of defunct colonial institutions?
In the autumn of our lives, we are now an endangered lot – like the ageing Lion whose “pride” has been poached upon by young rivals with noting between their pretty ears, whose territory has been reduced by marauding ad-men, the thunder of whose vitriolic pen has been stolen by news breakers of another kind and whose very credibility is questioned in prime time – more sting-ed against than stinging.
Once like the British Empire – the sun never set on us – we now have to contend with Bosses a fraction our age. Worse, he is a she. Bosses, who have unilaterally reached the conclusion, that our sole purpose in life should be to fill the spaces left fallow by the ad-department and no more. The “open-ed” is dead and gone, as are the editorial pages. And nobody subscribes to the view that it is people like us who mould the public opinion, “telling” them (the uninitiated and the philistine) what to think. What is worse is that now we are being looked upon with the same “reverence” with which ordinary mortals view the sundry God men – from the libidinous baba’s to the Yoga peddling Ayurvedic quacks. “Sexy Sadie, what have you done”?
I remember another age, another time, when I was just about breaking journalistic bread and my “Editor” had handed down to me the 10 proverbs to live by. Nothing as “Earth shattering” as their more celebrated cousins from the Mount of Sinai, but no less profound, as far as lives of hacks go. Please note that they were from a time when a “glint in the eye” was not equated to a lapse of Vishaka and “erring on the wrong side” of the definition of “rape” was not even a phrase that was coined, and “loose cannon” was a term that had more usage when describing journalists than “loose morals”. Here are the Old Proverbs, made new, sensitized and politically neutered. No, this is in no way an effort to obfuscate facts – a transgression is still a transgression by whatever name it is called, but an irreverent effort to take a look at our pathetic selves, warts, penile dysfunctions, groping hands – et all.
- The e-mail of the species is deadlier than the male. Actually, there is something even deadlier called a female – ask the Black Widow’s paramour – but that is beside the point. If you want to sound pompous, do not “recuse” yourself via an email – even if the mail is directed to yourself and your kitchen cabinet. If you had the temerity to act fresh, have the balls to face the music.
- To flash is feminine, to look agape is not divine. Women who dress like Christmas trees? That’s their prerogative – you still don’t have the right to play “dirty old man”. You are not God’s answer to womankind – the faster this fact dawns upon you, the better. If you can’t accept it you are not fit outside the asylum, go take a Slutwalk.
- Birds (or chicks or whatever) of a feather facebook together. Yes it is the most popular word in the dictionary, begins with a “F” and ends with a “K” and is certainly not what your conceited and convoluted mind is thinking about. So what is your spirit is willing? Your flesh is weak, repulsive and rotting. You can get into the flock with your sheep’s clothing but that is about all that you will achieve.
- A dog is a man’s best friend. A lady dog is at best a fiend. There’s a word for it and life’s that. Forget about the leash, the only way to show your “affection” is by maintaining “arm’s length” distances.
- A Miss is as good as a mile. You have commanded the “weaker” sex to grin and you’re your transgressions for ages. Now the boot is on the other foot and even your “growls” don’t matter no more. Fall in line, or fall out. It’s that simple.
- A rising tide lifts all boats (boats alas, are not skirts). Tides sure turn, but that doesn’t mean that the tide turning for you will make you more acceptable or your passes bearable. For that matter, every working woman is not a bitch in heat that everybody (including you) can go take a sniff. What you are in may really be akin to the proverbial “dog’s life”, still then.
- A swarm in May is worth a lay, a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon, but a swarm is July is not worth opening the fly. She may be in the May of her life, but you have passed September aeons ago. So what if May rhymes with gay, hay and lay, has it occurred that your thoughts “penile” also rhymes with “senile”? And that is exactly how you look from where they stand.
- A watched pot never boils. In a way it doesn’t, because you just don’t have the fire in you to heat things up to begin with and because your “spark” is as dead as the “ethics” that you wrote about when you started your career. Forget about the tinderbox or the damp matchbox of your age, in today’s induction furnaces, it takes seconds to go from zero to scalding, Mr. Balding.
- Behind every great man there’s a woman usually telling him to lay off. It’s a different thing that in our vainglorious bravado we don’t pay heed to the voice of sanity, or the ruling deities of our lives.
- Spare the rod, spoil the child. Yes, the child is in us – in the way we behave when we chase across generations, “Lolita” and “Monica” be damned. What? It’s all the fault of the rod? That the rod was taken out in the first place to ensure that the child doesn’t get “spoiled”? Er, Um….
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