The other day while I was enjoying my rare and leisurely afternoon nap I received a tele-marketing call from some girl who was trying to sell me an add-on card on my number. Highly annoyed though I was, I couldn’t bring myself to get rude with that poor girl who was just doing her job. With as much politeness as I could muster, I told her that I was busy and hung up.
It then struck me, how often do we use the excuse ‘I’m busy’ or ‘I’ve been busy’ or ‘I was busy’ to find our way out of a tricky situation? This sure has happened a lot with every one of us. Most of us will agree, many times this expression is used as a euphemism for ‘F*** off!!!’
With the increasing popularity and use of social networking websites it has become quite simple to find, connect and bond with your long-lost friends. Along with them even the ones who you hated back then. Imagine when such a mind-numbing creature from your past finds your whereabouts and contacts you and complains that you haven’t been in touch. What do you say? ‘I’ve been busy mate!!’
So, there was a wedding at some relative’s place and your whole family went for it. You didn’t have the slightest care or inclination to attend and after a lot of heated argument you were allowed to stay back. After few days you meet that relative somewhere and for not showing up in the wedding the excuse you give is, ‘Uncle, I was busy preparing for my exams’.
This is not used or meant only as an excuse every time. Remember the time in college when we hung out with our gang of friends? Whatever the situation or time our friends were always there for us. As we get older however, everything changes. Even if we need to talk to our old friend now, we need to consult the calendar first, if only to make sure we’re not disturbing him. And more so, it breaks our heart when he does pick up the call but before we can even say ‘Hi…’ he says he’s busy and will call back.
This also is sort of a fashion-statement. It does not feel stylish to let people know that you’re not doing anything and have all the time in the world. So just to keep up that rep of yours, you don’t pick up your ringing phone quickly even if its right next to you, or better still, let the call go into missed calls! What, are you just sitting idle to take people's calls? Didn’t the caller know? That time of the day… ‘YOU’RE BUSY!!!’
