Sunday, August 12, 2007

Respected sir....!!!

"Sir,
It is a sad state of affairs that there is an unholy nexus.........."

"Mr Editor,
Could we have a more incompetent......"

"Sir,
I would like to know..........."

"Sir,
Is there any criminal offence..............."

Yeh well I better stop here and explain eh.. Frankly this is like the minutest of a sample from the overflowing reader's opinion we get. Guess that was too fast. So let me start from the beginning. I work in an online journalism section of a company where readers in response to articles send their opinions. The quotes I posted way in the beginning are just a small percent of the lot we get. Which usually start this way.
So?? There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong there does it??..lol...yeh well really it isn’t your fault either... that’s the way most of us are conditioned right?

ohk ohk....wont uphold the suspense anymore.....the thing bugging me here is the beginning of each sentence. Why is it always SIR or MR. EDITOR??....is it coz the editor is really a male??.. not quite...my boss..rather boss’s boss is a female..a brilliant one at that.
so really the Sir came as a conditioned response than knowledge...a pity don’t you think...women have done wonders in almost all fields and yet when one thinks about a doctor or a lawyer the "HE" or male factor comes in doesn’t it. just be honest for once. And hey this isn’t an attack on only the males...female members of our society are just as guilty of this.
In fact, just before ending this i'd like to add a question my psychology proff. asked us in our first year of grad. She told us this incident and asked us to give an answer to the puzzle…….i’ll try and frame the question as well as I can:

One stormy night, a father and a son were traveling in a car across a forest. Here they met with a deadly accident where the father died on the spot. The son was badly injured but a few people who were accidentally passing by took the kid straight to the nearest hospital. There the doctor in charge immediately operated on the child and then went straight to the people and said…”Thank you. You have saved my son”.


Hmm now if you haven’t figured out the answer I just might be a bit surprised. But even if that is the case the answer is simple……….. The doc was the child’s mum. Easy is it??

Not quite usually people never figure it out. The answers I get to this question varies from the doc being a church’s father to the ghost of the father entering the doc to thank the people. Rather amusing aint it?? But truly speaking it’s a tragic thing. Nothing of harm mabbe. But all things evil or good start with the thought behind it. They start with the attitude and aptitude of a person towards a certain thing. And if that is negative God forbid a lot of negativities would come out of that.

Think about it!!!

4 comments:

Hoppy said...

hey aachi......
well dats one of d most ignored problems-for d want of a betr word- our society faces

bt den wrnt v taught in d primary classes dat d gendr of ne unknwn thing or prsn is by default MALE....
so u rilly cant blame d ppl hre.....d educatn systm needs to correct it dre.


well i got d ans to ur ques....nd nw i m glad dat i did :D

nd dre r sm ppl who ryt he/she or mr/miss editor
so d society aint completly blind :)

dres still a ray of hope


well it was wndrful peice of wrk so simple yet conveyin all u had to.
duncha think bout stoppin rytin dat will do more harm to d society dan ne thing else cos it will loose a strong thread pulln it towards d betrment :)

toodles!!!

GuNs said...

Valid point, but I guess these figures of speech have been made when women did not do these things and old habits die hard and so do old conventions.

I mean, when you think of a nurse, you hardly ever think of a man.

To some extent, the new age should bring about a change in these expressions but it will be ridiculous to go out and try to change everything - Batswoman, Wingwoman etc. "Hunter" has yielded to "Huntress" but "Shooter" couldn't possibly yield to "Shootress" ! I'm all for being politically correct as long as it is logically justifiable.

-PeAcE
--WiTh
---GuNs

P.S. : I often use Dear Sir/Madam when I write to unknown people but it doesn't always look a pretty sight on a letter.

shaks said...

hey...
thats not fair...
you cant blame anybody for this as this has come to us hereditary...

In the time of our grandaparents and before that, only men used to do these specialist jobs... like doctors or even engineers and so on...
And some women were called doctors but a little differently... witch doctors... he he he...

So not our mistake... something that existed in our society for thousands of years, you want it to be changed in just 60 yrs....
I agree its not right but sometime in the past it was...
And it would certainly take time for these things to change...

Vikram said...

Well i wnt deny frm the fact tht i too use sri but i was under the impression tht SIR meant "Senoir In Respect" may be anybody... but when i found it today it wa the honour given only to men... frm now onwards i will make a point of including madam too...