Peeves, Piques & Provocations

Peeves, Piques & Provocations

 By

 Vivek Hande 

 I do regard myself as a reasonable man. Not much annoys me or gets under my skin. I think I deal with irritations and irritants with a fair degree of equanimity. I would think most folks who know me would tend to agree with my self-appraisal. And hence I was more than surprised the other day, when it was pointed out to me that I harbour too many peeves and piques and if the person were to be believed, I have always been so!

 

I don’t mind being criticized once in a while but this got me thinking. It set off introspective bells and I decided to assess for myself if this were indeed true. Now, what gets me irritated? Not much really… I like my fountain pens arranged on my table in a particular way and if anybody changes the sequence or places them in a different way, I do get rather irritated. I ring up someone to have an urgent word and I often seem to have forgotten what it was I wanted to talk about, by the time I get through. That does irk me. 

 But that is fairly understandable, isn’t it? I have some travel related peeves. All flights scheduled before mine and after mine always take off on time. My flight is yet to be on time ever. I have yet to get space in the overhead locker above my seat in so many years of flying. The folks sitting next to me always manage custody of the armrest. I almost always have a mother with a snotty, wailing child on the next seat; if not, then a hugely obese gent who starts snoring as soon as the flight takes off. Somehow the stewardesses across the world have ganged up to spill coffee or juice on my jacket. I invariably get my luggage as the last straggler on the conveyor belt. That is, if the luggage does indeed manage to find itself on the belt. And somehow, the luggage trolley that I manage to commandeer, always, has its wheels jammed. But these would irritate any normal person, I am sure.

 I hate the way some people lick the Malai(cream) on a cup of perfectly good coffee with their finger dipped in the beverage and then proceed to drink it. Slurping noises while drinking the tea jangle my vestibulo- cochlear apparatus. Eating noisily when the entire neighbourhood can hear what you are chewing brings on a migraine. Sneezing or coughing without a handkerchief or at least a cupped palm makes me very uncomfortable. I myself feel very vulnerable and incomplete if I step out without a handkerchief. I try, in futility, to explain to my sons, the significance of this piece of cloth. Another very distressing peeve is seeing someone pick his nose at the other end of the room and then approach you with an outstretched hand to shake your hand with a broad beaming smile. 

I have a lot of teachers..

 Another consistent irritant is the traffic jam on my side of the road. Somehow, miraculously there is always free flowing traffic in the other direction. A frequent bugbear is putting the phone on charge and after a good hour when you expect the phone to be juiced up, realizing that the switch was off in the first place. I hate folks coming to an event late and I prefer to circle around the venue half hour in advance than be late. I hate couples discussing nuances of a movie munching popcorn loudly in a movie theatre when the fate of the world is about to be decided on the screen. I also have an issue with queues in billing counters. It is not a joke but my queue always moves very slow; the attendant goes for a toilet break when I reach the counter or the credit card machine finishes its roll just during my billing.. the consistency is amazing.

I just don’t like folks parking their cars in an inconsiderate manner and it is with great difficulty that I resist the urge to stick a note on the windshield with some choicest invectives. And I get rather hassled, when, I hold a door out of chivalry in a hotel or a mall for a lady and she just sways past, without an acknowledgement, as if I were a doorman paid to do the job.

I also have an issue with spellings. Incorrect spellings hit me hard. It is necessary to check your spellings and not embarrass yourself if you wish to guarantee a good first impression. Stationary and stationery are two different words and mean something quite  different. Wrong spellings are not peeves- they are definitely provocations!

One of my major peeves is people pronouncing my name wrong. It certainly has me bristling.  I  have  nothing against people whose family name ends with an 'a'(Handa). My best friends go by that name . They are wonderful people and quite the salt of the earth. It is just that I am a Hande and I like it that way.

 The more I think about it, the more I realize, I do perhaps have some peeves and piques and provocations, but I still do think I am a fairly unflappable man. I am definitely not in the league of Whoopi Goldberg, who said, “I don’t have pet peeves like some people; I have a whole kennel of irritation!"