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#jrdforjewar
[Bloody Civilian (adj.)]
A term bequeathed as a legacy of the ‘British Raj’ to the Indian subcontinent (and perhaps other British colonies too), where the civilian populace living outside of verdant cantonments, were scorned upon as being uncouth and unrefined by the haughty uniformed ‘gora saabs’ (colloquial honorific title for the Brit Officer class) and thus was born the moniker! And given its continuing usage, an apt if sardonic quip, immortalized in post-colonial subcontinental lexicon sums it up pretty nicely - the Brits may have gone but the Raj lives on!
As a civilian, married to a ‘military’ spouse (wife is a serving senior commissioned officer with the Indian Air Force), I have pronounced difficulty in shrugging off this moniker with my inherent OLQs (Officer-Less Qualities) including among others, a consistent history of faux pas, displaying socially inept behavior and persistent dress-code violations - most often within the hallowed precincts of the Officers’ Mess!
The Bloody Civilian is mostly a roll call of personal experiences on unpredictable civvy street - often juxtaposed with observations against the backdrop of an idyllic & predictable garrison life. These experiences span across a range of highly personal interests, sometimes quirky and purely observational at other times; but mostly celebrating a state of joie de vivre!
PK :The Bloody Civilian!
TBC: The Bloody Civilian, is a brand owned by Rota8 Ventures (OPC) Pvt. Ltd.
“Awesome Bro”: The Great Vocabulary Recession!
Now The Bloody Civilian is father to two precocious teenage daughters, and therefore expectedly, has to spend a lot of stressful moments at home in their presence. Teeny tantrums aside, what truly torments The Bloody Civilian is the linguistic doomsday ushered in by Gen-Z speak. Schooled on the sacred scrolls of the 1930s ‘High School English Grammar And Composition’ by Messrs. Wren & Martin (another vestige of the Brits may have gone but the Raj lives on post-colonial legacy), The Bloody Civilian adopted the language with messianic zeal. Like The Bloody Civilian loves to say, “the Brits ruled us for nearly 200-years, the least we could do was steal their syntax!”
But alas, the girls seem to communicate in a dialect that is excruciatingly painful to The Bloody Civilian’s ears - particularly when every sentence is punctuated with the pesky ‘Bro’, and every adjective lazily replaced with that irksome ‘Awesome’. Needless to say, such linguistic vandalism is complete anathema to The Bloody Civilian!
Once upon a time, the English language was a sprawling empire of nuance. It had words for everything—from the ecstasy of divine revelation (epiphany) to the disappointment of a soggy toast (ennui).
Then came Chad – your quintessential vocabulary starved American teenager.
Chad was 14, wore cargo shorts year-round, and had just discovered Mountain Dew. One day, while watching a skateboarder land a moderately successful ollie, Chad uttered two words that would forever alter the linguistic landscape: “AWESOME BRO.” And thus began the lexical apocalypse!
The Great Vocabulary Recession
The overuse of “awesome” and “bro” is not merely a grotesque trying-to-sound-sophisticated choice - it’s full-blown lexical bankruptcy. These words now function as linguistic duct tape, slapped onto every situation where actual thought might be required.
Sample this actual conversation overheard in a smoothie bar:
“Bro, this mango smoothie is so awesome.”
“Totally, bro. Like, awesomely awesome.”
“Bro, you’re awesome.”
“No, you’re awesome, bro.”
Now at no point in this entire conversation did anyone express a coherent thought, but everyone left feeling validated!
Fueled by energy drinks, gym mirrors, and TikTok algorithms, ‘awesome’ and ‘bro’ have formed a self-reinforcing feedback loop. One cannot exist without the other. They are, in yet more American culture-speak: the peanut butter and jelly of verbal mediocrity.
“Bro, that dead lift was awesome.”
“Awesome, bro. You crushed it.”
“Bro, we’re awesome.”
“Yeah Bro…”
This loop continues until someone passes out from protein powder inhalation or accidentally reads a book!
The Rise and Fall of “Awesome”: A Tragicomedy in One Word
Once upon a time, “awesome” meant something that inspired awe - great architecture, volcanoes, divine apparitions, or the occasional tax refund. It was a word reserved for the terrific, the terrifying, the transcendent.
In the wake of this lexical tsunami, countless words have been swept into obscurity:
Splendid (too British)
Majestic (requires a cape)
Exquisite (sounds like a wine label)
Formidable (intimidating to pronounce)
Cool - once the reigning monarch of casual teen praise, has been dethroned by awesome, which now reigns as the universal stamp of approval for everything from probiotic drinks to existential breakthroughs – aka default setting for human expression.
Even the corporate crowd is catching on with a vengeance:
“Team, the Q3 synergy metrics are looking awesome. Let’s circle back and ideate more awesomeness.”
Translation: We have no idea what we’re doing, but we’re excited in a vague, clueless way!
The Cognitive Cost of Bro-ification
Once a humble abbreviation of “brother,” ‘Bro’ was a word steeped in familial warmth. It evoked kinship, solidarity, and the occasional shared trauma of picking up and disposing dog poop. But somewhere between protein shakes and crypto podcasts, ‘Bro’ mutated.
Today, ‘Bro’ is no longer a word. It’s a grammatical black hole into which nuance goes to die. It is also now a multi-purpose tool:
Greeting: “Bro!”
Warning: “Bro…”
Disbelief: “BRO?!?”
Linguists estimate that every time someone says “bro,” three adjectives and one complex emotion are lost forever. It’s the verbal equivalent of replacing a symphony with a car horn.
Consider this exchange:
“Bro, that movie was bro.”
“Totally bro, bro.”
Translation: The film was emotionally resonant, visually stunning, and thematically rich - but we’ve chosen to express that using a single syllable repeated with varying intonations.
The Lexical Rehabilitation Act.
In order to prevent a complete semantic collapse, The Bloody Civilian proposes the following be expeditiously implemented:
Mandatory use of adjectives with more than two syllables.
A moratorium on “bro” unless actual sibling DNA is involved.
Reintroduction of words like resplendent, transcendent, and adequate.
As for The Bloody Civilian’s personal domestic situation with the girls, it is quite unlikely that charity may even remotely begin at home, and any sort of lexical rehabilitation seems as distant as the Voyager 1 is currently in relation to planet Earth!
The Bloody Civilian’s tryst with the AFFWA: Dispatches from deep within the trenches of embroidered tablecloth and high-tea statecraft!
Bit of context first for the uninitiated. AFFWA stands for the Air Force Families Welfare Association. Until recently though, it was AFWWA or Air Force Wives Welfare Association. The ‘Families’ substituting the ‘Wives’ perhaps came about with the realization that there were (a handful of) cases like The Bloody Civilian’s, assertively claiming their own rights to the group, as civilian husbands married to women officers! The AFFWA, much like its counterparts for the other two sister services (Army and the Navy) is loosely a vestige of the Raj era, when the more privileged Brit Officer wives took on the role of welfare guardians for the wives and families of enlisted native men (mostly away on battlefields), as a way of re-assuring them that their families were being well looked-after in their absence – fostering morale and esprit de corps. But post -independence saw the institutionalization of this informal grouping into an organized and registered entity. It’s evolution since has been nothing short of a seismic transformation - welfare meetings turned into high-tea fueled ideation soirees, social causes pursued passionately with colour themed exotic picnic lunches and more. Once a humble support wing, AFFWA now operates like a cross between a diplomatic salon and a lifestyle influencer collective with passive-aggressive air superiority to boot!
Oh and The Bloody Civilian has had to navigate a two-tier membership gauntlet - first as an ‘Associate Member’ back in the AFWWA days, basically the club’s way of saying, “You can sit with us, but only at the folding table.” But with the opportune renaming to AFFWA, The Bloody Civilian finally earned his promotion to full membership! Although ‘Sanginis’ (loosely translated in English to mean: a close group of female collaborators) as the members of the AFWWA were called, are yet to figure out a revised moniker to include the intruding male class. Perhaps by design!
Note: This piece though relates more to The Bloody Civilian’s tryst with the original (and more exciting) Air Force Wives Welfare Association (AFWWA) rather than the contemporary (and staid) Air Force Families Welfare Association (AFFWA); and therefore, the use of the acronym AFWWA throughout.
The Real Power:
In the scheme of real-world power dynamics, the AFWWA org chart puts the actual chain of command to shame. At the summit sits the President (a.k.a. the First Lady of Air HQ), followed by the Regional Presidents - and then the Local Presidents, each one ruling their territory with the authority of an ancient empress. And don’t be fooled by the disarming smiles and perfectly coiffured hairdos - this is power projection at its finest. Sure, the Flag Ranks (anything less doesn’t even count) may strut around with their stars and swagger, but deep down they are terror-struck to think of the consequences of earning the lady's displeasure – like when the lady didn’t get her choice of drink or her seat at the last soiree obscured her view from the official photographer. Their bravado melts faster than ice cream on a tarmac when faced with the ultimate authority - not protocol, not the Air Chief, but a mildly displeased AFWWA member with a WhatsApp group at her disposal. In the rarefied air of this stratoverse - consequences are swift, and the grapevine? Deadlier than encrypted comms! AFWWA isn’t just adjacent to power .. it is the power.
Subtle Power Projection:
In the theatre of air power, where uniforms sparkle and egos inflate, AFWWA remains the AWR (Always Within Range) stealth missile: quiet, precise, and undeniably effective. Some markers:
While the Flag Ranks may push combat doctrines on paper, AFWWA Presidents push entire base renovations… with curtains that match.
Nothing escapes the AFWWA grapevine. Before Air HQ even drafts a posting signal, the ladies already know who’s posted where, why, and with whom he plays squash.
The Air Force ensures air superiority. AFWWA ensures catering superiority. One samosa short at a welfare event, and the Officer in-charge may find their mess privileges mysteriously revoked.
The Station Commander has a vision for the year. The first lady of the station has a calendar—color-coded, backed by consensus, and non-negotiable.
Officer reshuffling often follows mysterious “family considerations,” which just happen to coincide with AFWWA committee dynamics. Coincidence? Never.
AFWWA ladies glide across social terrain with the precision of a formation flypast. One eyebrow raise from the AOC’s wife has ended careers more efficiently than any court of inquiry.
AFWWA stitching sessions aren’t just socially productive craft sessions - they’re covert policy forums. Apparently, at one recent workshop, a cushion cover motif allegedly influenced the redesign of the squadron insignia.
One time when a squadron tried to schedule a flying exercise on the day a welfare picnic was pre-planned; the exercise was swiftly and summarily rescheduled. “Operational readiness was important, but so was the chaat & paani-poori programme by the pool,” came the directive from the AFWWA office. The Command knew better than to question it!
The Bloody Civilian’s indoctrination and early lessons:
It is the themed party planning committee (the very heart of AFWWA covert ops) where the real strategic maneuvering takes place. Alliances shift, frenemies broker temporary truces, and someone, inevitably, emerges with the all-powerful right to select the next party’s theme.
AFWWA meetings invoke the tactical complexities of deciding between rose gold and champagne beige for the Bollywood night, besides one learns to nod knowingly at discussions of chutney calibration and floral arrangements.
The Bloody Civilian also learnt the hard way that “able member support” in his context meant carrying folding chairs and providing tech ‘jugaad’ for setting up obsolete wide-screen projection and sound systems in the mess inventory.
Learning to become fluent in the dialect of “passive assertiveness,” which seems to operate at a frequency just above audible range and just below missile launch codes. And neutralize threats from passive-aggressive WhatsApp messages ending in “😊”
The Bloody Civilian’s attempt to recommend a Chicken Fricassée recipe once led to a three-hour debate on “culinary nationalism.” He now respectfully defers to the AFWWA Food subcommittee.
The Bloody Civilian has begun to understand that there’s a secret AFWWA signal system involving handbag placement and rangoli styles that triggers chain reactions in base-level decision making. He’s still trying to decode the cryptic protocol embedded in the dessert buffet layout.
Surviving AFWWA:
A definitive tactical guide by The Bloody Civilian for his ilk – issued on popular demand and silent desperation:
The AFWWA operates on a complex, unspoken matrix of seniority, charisma, and gossiping prowess. If you aren’t part of the “core committee coffee,” you're already non-ops.
If the AFWWA WhatsApp group goes lull, prepare for storm conditions. Rumors are currency. For instance, what appears to be a minor debate over napkin folding technique might in fact be the opening skirmish of a long campaign for control of the Diwali Mela decor design.
Remain ever-alert to shifting alliances; it is not uncommon for an innocent suggestion about playlist sequencing at the annual gala to trigger a flurry of late-night phone calls and the rapid formation of splinter groups.
Balancing the unwritten hierarchy of the AFWWA is an art form - one must bow just enough to the Grand Matriarchs, practice enough to be the fastest-finger-first on WhatsApp and above all -never, ever, get caught between two ladies disagreeing over the proper shade of lavender for the dining table runners.
Epilogue
Once a wide-eyed aspirant to be a full-time member of the AFWWA, cavalierly pledging allegiance to the sacred motto - “to boldly go where few men have ventured before”, The Bloody Civilian is now simply trying to survive, one posting at a time!
The Bloody Civilian and the tactical wipeout!
The Bloody Civilian has always prided himself on a no-nonsense fitness regime. And conditioned in the spartan austerity of the Air Force (Officer’s Mess) gyms, The Bloody Civilian is no stranger to grit and a thriftily enforced cleanliness/hygiene regime – optional at best. After all, a few sweat stains built character, is the overriding ethos of the Air Force gym!
So on a recent stay at an Army Officer’s Institute, The Bloody Civilian decides to flex his muscles at the in-house gym, unaware that he was crossing into hostile territory - where sterility was sacredly guarded by overzealous minders.
At first, the The Bloody Civilian dismissed the citrus-scented air and the gleaming, fingerprint-free surfaces as theatrical. After all, how sterile could a squat rack be?! Smugly grabbing a weight… only to be intercepted mid-rep by an exasperated fellow patron wielding disinfectant wipes and pointing to a poster on the wall - “Sir, you missed the pre-use sanitation protocol. Section 4 of the gym hygiene SOP.”
From that moment on, things escalated rapidly.
The Bloody Civilian, under the hawk-eyed glare of regular patrons began wiping things compulsively: handles, mats, treadmill grab rails, his own knees - just in case. In all of this, the workout became an afterthought, instead, The Bloody Civilian found himself spiraling into a full-blown FOMO (Fear Of Mopping Out) - gripped by an overwhelming feeling of dread that some surface, somewhere in the gym, had somehow escaped his cleansing frenzy.
The mocking body language of the patrons seemed to communicate: welcome, bloody civilian; you thought this was just a gym. It's not. It's a high-stakes battleground of sweat discipline and sanitization warfare.
And just thirty minutes in, The Bloody Civilian had ‘lost the loving feeling’ in his soul and most of his spine, with his workout gear soaked - not from sweat, but from absorbing an assortment of disinfectant sprays and sanitizers.
Perhaps the impact of this sanitizing workout has left its deep forever mark on the The Bloody Civilian and he has now begun color-coding his wipes and wearing gloves to refill his water bottle, which in-turn is sanitized in between sips. The Bloody Civilian’s gym bag is now outfitted with a mini spray bottle holster alongside disinfectant wipes and a laminated cleaning checklist.
And thus, a tragic case of tactical-grade OCD was born!
The LinkedIn conundrum: when more is less and brash is beautiful!
The Bloody Civilian has had to undertake a major revamp of his LinkedIn account in recent times.
Never having truly warmed-up to the platform from the beginning, it was a bit of a reluctant endeavor therefore. It ought to be clarified though, that the reluctance stems from The Bloody Civilian's old school persona (Gen Z speak: antiquated), that is a bit wary of ‘personal branding’ and has nothing to do with the platform per se.
Admittedly though, the platform has indeed proven useful in professional matters in the past. And given the The Bloody Civilian's new professional foray, a LinkedIn presence was de rigueur. But the whole experience to re-build this presence was quite an eye opener and tad nerve-racking!
For starters, one glance at the profiles floating on the platform is enough to make you realize that despite a professional career spanning three-decades, you are not even born! Such is the level of creative description around experience, skills, achievements and particularly leadership qualities, that you are bound to feel inadequate and useless. Even a simple task of selecting the profile picture can spark an existential crisis - the serious professional look or a cool vibe with sunglasses or perhaps just plain casual chic!
Interestingly, in the largely incestuous LinkedIn ‘profileverse’, where profiles keep following the copy-paste-edit-adapt routine across the board, a bunch of words seem to keep doing the rounds, leading even LinkedIn to come out with an annual thesaurus of overused words. ‘Transformational Leaders’ and ‘High Impact Performers’ abound and everyone's a 'Thought Leader' or 'Visionary'. Talk about 'Disruptors', 'Startup Specialists', 'Evangelists' and 'Ground-breaking Innovators'. All of which makes it appear that every organization was doomed until the arrival of these deliverers.
It is also amusing how roles get a larger-than-life twist. Sample for instance:
“Global Strategy Implementation Specialist, orchestrating a symphony of cross-functional teams to drive exponential growth” – a Project Manager if you please. And the “Data Entry Specialist”, transforms into a, “Master of Data Curation and Integrity, pioneering cutting-edge solutions for information management”. A summer job as a barista ends up being, "a caffeinated experience architect, leveraging foamy artistry to drive customer satisfaction". Just answering emails is positioned as," streamlining external communication for enhanced business efficiency"!
And in the Indian context, LinkedIn seems to be transcending the mundane professional-connect/job-search paradigm. Apparently, LinkedIn is playing a starring role in matchmaking; in the very Indian scheme of an arranged marriage, LinkedIn profiles are being scrutinized as intensely as the horoscopes. Then there are landlords, who are demanding to see a LinkedIn profile as part of a preliminary screening (read: as a negotiation tool), before getting into negotiations with prospective tenants - simple correlation assumes, more the use of hyperboles on your profile, the bigger your rental outgo. Besides, it is learnt, that even agencies like Immigration/Visa Services have started looking at applicant LinkedIn profiles, in order to corroborate information provided against professional background questions. So while exaggerating facts might be attractive someplace, it might backfire spectacularly at others - welcome to classic Catch-22!
The stakes couldn’t be higher for young Indian tech professionals particularly, who’s lives revolve around finding the holy grail - the perfect match, the ideal pad and securing a US H1B visa.
But as the The Bloody Civilian also discovered, humility and brevity are concepts lost on the pages of LinkedIn where clearly, more is less and brash is beautiful. The 'concise' job-description has given way to a verbose epic and achievements are magnified manifold, with no room for understatement. Having been drilled in the art of KISS - keep it simple/succinct stupid, The Bloody Civilian can’t seem to figure out the art of embellishing the profile. By the way, a study conducted sometime back revealed that about 80% profiles on LinkedIn are embellished to varying degrees!
So while The Bloody Civilian attempts to master the art of glamming it up on LinkedIn, don't forget to take a good hard re-look at your own profile for any additional bling you could add to make it shine in the LinkedIn universe. The time of the standout LinkedIn profile has surely arrived; who wants to be left behind!