Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Anybody can be a father ... but it takes somebody to be a DAD!!

Among the lot of junk mails that daily clutters my mailbox one really caught my eye. Now this one was from the Indian phone company whose services i use for my international calls.

The subject line said "Anybody can be a Father...but it takes somebody to be a DAD!"

Apparently we even have a Father's Day now and the mail was a failed attempt to sell me something for my dad for Father’s Day. On a footnote looks like we will need to redefine our relationship as I have never wished Father’s day to him and I suspect he remains as ignorant as he is on these special days.

For me the most catchy part remained the subject line which was not making any sense to me .. "Anybody can be a father ... but it takes somebody to be a DAD"

Who is a father and who is a DAD?

And what happens to those Appa, Babuji, Pitaji variety? Where do they fall in? But then marketers probably think that it will take sometime before they are ready to target that segment. As usual they would be laggards.

In and out of our workplace we get loads of jargons ... very often you hear someone saying "we need a paradigm shift" .. or "we need to pull right value drivers/levers" ... or even better combining multiple of them like "we need to organize ourselves to bring innovation and be in a position to pull right value drivers" .. a more simpler but often used is "we need to think out-of-box on this one"

To me these sentences never sounded English and very often i do not resist the temptation of stopping the speakers and asking them meaning of these sentences. Very often i find an annoyed look or even more 'un'-english answer.

But then again for me such meetings remain fun as they provide loads of laughter once you are out of those meetings .. paradigm shift .. huh!! .. value drivers .. wow!!

It was the same puzzled moment for me through that mail. My first reaction was to write a mail back to them asking them the difference between father and a dad .. but somehow i didn't ..

Looks like your 'DADness' would be lot low if you do not get lot of gifts from your sonny/daughters .. unless the juniors spend loads of money on buying gifts fathers can not claim to be dads ... and ofcourse they need to be marked for father’s day.

I think Doors had the same thought when they wrote that line in their song 'The End' .. “Father, yes son, I want to kill you” .. I guess their father was not enough DAD!

5 comments:

  1. For Mother's Day will their line be " Any one can be a mother...but it takes somebody to be a MOM"?

    What about Valentine's Day: "Any one can be a Valentine...but it takes somebody to be a SOUL MATE"? Or Whores Day: "Any one can be a whore...but it takes somebody to be PRETTY WOMAN?"

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  2. Nice question! :)

    I think they mean that a 'Dad' is more informal, a 'friend' more than a parent.

    The way one addresses a parent is more important than how close your relationship is, it seems...

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  3. Ar,nt both only a form of expression?This relation can not be termed or weighed in terms of gifts.Those who have this relation missing in life are the right people to express and explain the meaning either way.

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  4. Vinod sir nice extrapolation:-)) .. i am disappointed as we still do not have grand pa grand ma .. mausi mausa .. mama mami chacha chachi days .. once they start getting reckoning we will have to send some of our gifts to haven or hell depending on where they are ...

    Ma'm: its not about the question .. what i perceived was a very stupid attempt .. and yes what we call our parents is between us .. for me DAD word is a recent phenomena as i have grew up calling my dad as 'pa'

    Chowla sir: exactly they are diff forms of expressions and i would doubt on any differences between them ..

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  5. this is what you would enjoy then I think :D

    http://litterateuse.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/to-the-expressively-challenged/

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