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Monday, June 24, 2013

Wordsmith Blew the Job!


This post has been written as a part of the Indian Bloggers League (2013) contest conducted by WriteUp Cafe.

Indian Bloggers League (2013) hyperlink www.writeupcafe.com/ibl
WriteUp Cafe hyperlink www.writeupcafe.com/

This was the brief  - 'You are an editor of a local daily. A new trainee has been given the task of covering an important event who in order to impress you has used highly decorative language with a lot of flamboyant words completely out of place. Write a humorous post describing your experience editing the piece.'

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There cannot be any better thing in the world than being paid for doing something which you absolutely love! And that’s why I love my job. I found my calling a lot early in life. I always knew I wanted to write and so I took all the right steps when it came to my education. While my friends opted to be engineers, doctors and chartered accountants, I chose to be a writer. And today I’m the editor of ‘Nagpur Express’, a local lifestyle daily where I’m working for the last five years. The newspaper covers lifestyle stories, local stories, social events and celebrity interviews. Being the best newspaper in terms of circulation and readership in the city there are quite a few media aspirants who often look to intern at the daily. So it’s quite normal for me to get a couple of calls every day from students who want to intern.


Now there are two types of students who come to intern. The first kind consists of students who are thinking long term and want to build a career in the print media and hence take every word I say very seriously. They are really passionate about their work and are quick learners as they put their soul into it. The second kind involves students who are relatively younger and need an internship experience which would help them in getting brownie points in any mass media course which they plan to pursue. The second kind is often the laid back one as they know that they are at the daily for a short period of time. While I wish that the first kind of students come to me more, I seriously dread the second kind. But you don’t always get what you want in life, do you?

The beauty of any language is that if used in the proper way it can create a long lasting impression in the mind of a reader. One doesn’t necessarily need to use the ‘heavy bombastic’ or flamboyant words to make an impact, all one needs is to use the simple words in the right order and the right way! But youngsters (the second kind) the way they are these days – overambitious and impatient tend to turn a deaf year many times. In order to impress me, they overlook the advice and the result is – a report or a piece written by an intern in such a way that it you feel like being an English teacher and teaching them the basics of English language all over again! Of course, I can’t do that (editors get paid more than teachers), so I choose to edit the crappy reports and have a laugh over it at times!

Being a lifestyle newspaper, Nagpur Express covers various social events and glamorous parties in the city which reflect the lifestyle of the city. Many times I send interns to cover these events to allow them to gain some exposure. They come the next day with the event details and file a report. Now I can give a lot of examples of a report badly written, but I’ll tell you about my favorite one which included one of the worst interns of Nagpur Express!

Bhavani Shankar, a 20 year old student (a second kind) was an intern who interned at the daily for a month. I remember the first time when I met him. Politely, I asked his name. The moment he told his name to me, I thought he heard me wrong and was telling me his father’s name which made me ask his name again! Now, Bhavani was not at all like his name (he sported a look like Bob Marley with deadlocks which obviously did not suit him) and neither was his addiction of using flamboyant words in a piece. There was just one problem – he knew the words, but didn’t know how and where to use them! I call it a ‘writer’s trap!’ Writer’s trap is a situation where one gets obsessed with a word or a phrase, so much that he feels the need to use it in piece whether it makes sense or not!

Two weeks of the desk work and I finally decided to give Bhavani his first assignment. I told him to cover a Medical association’s informal meet to be held at a city hotel. Bhavani went with the photographer and covered it and submitted the report to me on the second day. As I sat to edit it, I couldn’t help but wonder about why interns never take my advice seriously. Bhavani had used some flamboyant words in it, of course in a way which was hilarious and made this doctors do report sound like a ‘porn story’! ‘Easy on the angrezi Bhavani’, that’s what I wanted to tell him!

The report started with the line, ‘Gaiety was at its blossom when doctors amassed together to have a pleasurable time.’ My mind was now in the imagination mode. I thought, ‘Gaeity, blossom, pleasurable? What meet was it? Seemed to me like an open house sex session! I read further. ‘We spotted many prominent doctors of the city shedding their inhibitions and subpoenaing a good time to each other.’ What? Shedding inhibitions and giving a good time? Was it really about sex? After a thought, I understood what he was wanted to convey. He meant that doctors shed their aprons for the day and had a good time with each other. The words, ‘Shedding inhibitions’ must have got stuck in his mind from something he read and he used it here! He wanted to write serving (which should have been ‘having’ a good time with each other, instead he used subpoenaing! What a crazy guy, I thought! Craziness continued as he wrote, ‘President of the association, Dr. Dennis told Nagpur Express, ‘Doctors who are normally busy maneuvering on the patients are today reveling on each other, it’s nice to this orgasmic change!’ Either this guy has no idea about sex, or this guy has seen a lot of porn movies, I thought! He told me what he wanted to write. He wanted to write that doctors operate on patients generally and it was nice to see this fun change. ‘You could’ve just wrote buddy, why make these doctors sound like sex addicts’, I wanted to tell him! I read further, ‘Not just adults, some youngsters too seem to be enjoying the rhapsodically intimate time with commixed to each other’ Okay now we have the youngsters too on board who are enjoying the ‘intimate’ (friendly atmosphere, he meant!) time! ‘One youngster, Ireyana told us, ‘I’m a loner, so normally I enjoy my penultimate moments alone, but it’s satisfying to have company today!’ I now had my mouth open and I didn’t wish to read more, (thought it could have been fun) and all I could do was to call Bhavani and confront him.

‘Bhavani, how do you think our average reader is?’ I asked him politely.
‘Sir, our average reader is intelligent and very sophisticated!’ he replied.
‘First you try to impress me with your flamboyant words placed in the wrong order and make a social do report sound like a porn story and now you’re trying to tell me our average reader is sophisticated? Our average reader is intelligent no doubt but is simple and yet has a strong understanding. Write for the classes when you understand the usage or words, until then write for the masses, as they are our biggest readership!’ I told him.

Bhavani never took my advice and he continued making social reports sound like porn stories and obituaries at times. I stopped giving him any assignments. He left soon after with a certificate of internship and now is pursuing a mass media course at a college in Uttar Pradesh. All I can say is, ‘God bless the college and his teachers!’

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This report brings back many memories. Maybe we should organize a meet of 'doctors'.

Amar Ashok Jajoo said...

Hahah! May be we should! :)