How abbreviations hide uncoolness

There was a time long long ago when I used to chat on an internet chatroom along with this guy called zambezi who nowadays makes it a point to visit my blog and call me an idiot in my comments. We were a superb pair, quite funny and people used to laugh at us. The great thing was, since both of us are attention whores, we love being in the spotlight and so, that added chemistry to our comic routine.

But one day, like mold on a perfectly delicious loaf of bread, there arrived on the scene a guy. He was a nice guy. He was also a cute guy. He was both nice and cute, and how can I be so certain of that? Because his nick was nicecuteguy, and fuck, if you can't trust someone's chat nick then what can you trust? So anyways, he took the chatroom by storm. Being both nice and cute, he was a worthy opponent to our duo. By and by, because being nice and cute also sometimes makes people think you are funny, people began to laugh at his jokes as well. He became popular, as popular as a guy named nicecuteguy can be.

Now I'll be honest. When I see nicks like nicecuteguy, or cutecuddlyguy or lovelyfunnywellhungguy and so on, I feel nauseous. I feel like I just downed a bottle of vodka neat and followed it up by smoking the wrong end of a cigarette. You should try that by the way. It's a secret known only to tobacco companies and Dennis Leary; Namely that the best part of a cigarette is in its filter.

So anyways, nicecuteguy was giving me an attack of indigestion by his sheer presence. However, being the non-nicked nice cute guy that I am, I didn't allow it to interfere in my interaction with him. By and by, nicecuteguy, probably through dialog and dicussion with people who shared my viewpoint of his nick but not of his guts, abbreviated his nick to ncg. And after some more time, people forgot what that ncg used to stand for.

Except me. So one day, when I was in a particularly foul mood, I picked a fight with nicecuteguy. 'Cause to me, he was still nicecuteguy. The fight was over golf. I said to no one in particular that I thought golf was a pretty lame-ass sport. Now nicecuteguy turned out to be a golf enthusiast. He had probably lost his tv remote pretty early on in his childhood and been forced to watch the golf channel throughout his teen and adult years, thus leading to a fascination with the sport. 'Cause apart from that somewhat plausible reason, I can think of nothing that would ever incite a feeling within me any warmer than a casual dislike for the game.

So nicecuteguy threw a tantrum. He started babbling about the merits of the game. I said to him, "Listen nicecuteguy, I don't like the sport so save your breath." And then there was a pregnant pause in the conversation.

"What did you call me?", said nicecuteguy, seething behind his keyboard.
"I called you nicecuteguy, nicecuteguy", I said.
"Can you not read, my nick is ncg", said nicecuteguy.
"But ncg stands for nicecuteguy does it not?", I queried.
"Fuck you", said nicecuteguy, realizing that being an oldtimer, there were no truths that could be hidden from me.
"Ok nicecuteguy", I said, not willing to give up. He stopped responding. He had tried to hide behind an abbreviation and failed.

But the point of this story, apart from being a vehicle to highlight my ready wit and vindictiveness is also that frequently, seemingly cool abbreviations hide some totally uncool names. Like say, for instance, BEST. I bet most people living in Bombay today don't even know what BEST stands for, especially the younger generation which has no interest in history or how the world works and are just interested in being nice and cute. We have the BEST buses, they say. Oh yeah, Bombay's buses are the BEST. No, that's not how it works. BEST stands for "Bombay Electricity Supply and Transport". So Bombay buses are not the BEST. They might be the best, but not because they are the BEST.

Or take TELCO. When I was young, I thought fuck, my dad works in such a cool-sounding company. And then the cool-sounding abbreviation turned out to stand for Tata Engineering and Locomotive Company. What the fuck, I thought, that sounds so uncool.

Or here, in the US, we have this entity called NAMBLA. Is that a government run super secret anti-terrorist-pro-space-exploration organization, you might ask. Well, yes and no. Yes as in it's an organization but no, as in, it stands for the "North American Man Boy Love Association". They are a group lobbying for increased space exploration between men and boys. You may go throw up now.

But the best part about abbreviations is they can be used to make a fool out of the government. The company I used to work for earlier in my career, lets call it the Amitabh Bacchan Corporation. Just for kicks. So it existed as the Amitabh Bachhan Corporation. And then it went out of business. It owed, lets say a crore rupees to someone. The way it got out of this debt was astounding to say the least. It filed for bankruptcy and closed down so that the Amitabh Bacchan Corporation existed no more. Then it reopened as ABC with a clean sheet and no debt. And fuck, it was in business once more. Ah the joy of abbreviations. You gotta love em.

But if nicecuteguy is reading this piece, then I have one question for him. If you are nice and if you are cute, what's the need to hide under an abbreviation? Shout out to the world that you are nice and cute. And let the whole world drink in your niceness and your cuteness.