Friday, March 18, 2011

The language that used to be called English

Last night, I received a ‘text’ from friend which read: i m gd. hw hv u bn? lng tm! wna cth p smtm? trng 2 gt in tch fr a whl nw. gv m a bz n lts tk. wt sy n hwr thngs newyz?
It took me almost 15 minutes to figure the damned thing out. What it turned out to be was: I am good. How have you been? Long time! Want to catch up sometime? Trying to get in touch for a while now. Give me a buzz and let’s talk. What say, and how are things anyway?

Clearly, with such a complicated dialect of English that has emerged over the past few years, the need for cryptic codes has diminished rapidly. Funnily enough, this dialect is neither recognized officially nor taught in school. So how does it still manage to be propagated so widely? Here are a few reasons:

TEXTing: Also called SMSing, which is again, short for Short Messaging Service. Every ‘text’ is charged per character and so, understandably, conjunctions (one of the eight parts of speech) and vowels (A…E…I…O…U, for those who do not remember them, thanks to too much TEXTing) are wiped clean from every ‘text’ to try and pack in as much information as possible, within the permitted 160 odd characters. It’s like a telegram. Except that it mutilates the language beyond recognition. The end result reads like the ‘text’ above. The race to conserve characters leaves English looking pretty characterless. Pun unintended.

The solution: Someone needs to send these policy makers back to school to get their language and grammar right. They need to be given a Wren and Martin as a standard issue perhaps.

Uncle Sam: English was supposed to be, for quite some time, a language Great Britain had a monopoly on. Those were the days when English was pure. And sweet. It had complete spellings, a clearly defined pronunciation guide, unambiguous grammar and all the parts of speech intact. Then, sometime in the mid 20th century, a new kind of colonization emerged. Linguistic colonization. Led by the notorious Uncle Sam, it was nothing short of a jihad or a crusade. There was a systematic elimination of pillars that bolstered the language. Z replaced S, so organiSation became organiZation and realiSe became realiZe. Letters we needlessly butchered and as a result coloUr became COLOR, judgEment turned into JUDGMENT. Z came to be pronounced as ZEE and computers started to sound like COMPUDRS. Even worse route (pronounced ROOT) became route (ROUT, which, in British English, has an entirely different meaning) and Iran became I-RAN (sometimes I really feel like asking Uncle Sam: where the hell did you run?). To ensure complete efficacy of this “Final Solution of the English question”, softwares like Microsoft Word began to set their default language to ‘English (U.S.)’ and promptly displayed a red line under the word when you typed the conventionally correct spellings. Talk about annihilation!

The solution (not to be confused with “Final Solution of the English question”): To begin with, set the default language to English (U.K.). So what if the software is from Uncle Sam’s land? It doesn’t mean we bow down to linguistic tyranny. Next, get the pronunciations right. ROUT to ROOT. ZEE to Z. I-RAN to IRAN. Third, if you can, go and bonk Uncle Sam on the head. Really hard.

KPO a.k.a. Knowledge Processing and Outsourcing: I am still a little hazy on the exact difference between a KPO and a BPO but one thing I know for sure is that whatever they process, it is definitely not knowledge. I mean, come on, there used to be a time when graduation was known to be the basic level of qualification one had to achieve in order to live a decent and comfortable life. Needless to say, since the benchmark of education was much higher, so was the knowledge of languages and their understanding. Then came the outsourcing boom. A boom that blew everything to smithereens. Another covert attempt at colonisation by Uncle Sam. Kids barely out of their teens, with an incomplete education, were being offered plum jobs; their pronunciation was being forcibly altered to suit Uncle Sam’s needs. Obviously, is kids of an impressionable age were offered such high paying distractions, they were bound to fumble!

The solution: If you have siblings, kids, nephews, nieces or any other relatives in that age group, deter them from the KPO life. Tell them KPO is a misnomer! Attack the root of the problem.

Sure there must be more reasons, and you’re welcome to point them out, but off the cuff, these are the three that struck me. Sure, I may sound archaic when I say that the language used in ‘text’ messages are a little difficult for me to decipher but that is not because I am averse to adapting, I just refuse to sit back and accept the mutilation of a language that brings me my bread and butter. Nothing personal. I mean, to evolve is one thing and to wipe out is quite another. Besides, it is a global language and hence any change will affect communication around the globe.

Till we restore English to its former glory – let’s keep the torch burning and the protest alive. Long live the revolution.

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

तारीख

कमरे की सफ़ेद दीवार पे
एक पुराना कैलेंडर टंगा हुआ है
और उन् कागज़ के पन्नो में
सिमटी हुई हैं कुछ यादें

वो घड़ियाँ तो बीत गयी
पर उन् लम्हों की महक ताज़ा है
चाहे जनवरी की ठण्ड में ठिठुरती यादें हो
या जून की गर्मी में झुलसती हुई

कुछ तारीकें
पेंसिल से काटी हुई हैं
उस इंतज़ार की याद में
जो कभी पूरा नहीं हुआ

अखबारवाले के हिसाब से लेकर
कुछ चुनिन्दा लोगों के जन्मदिन तक
सब इस पुराने कैलेंडर के भरोसे ही तो
याद रहता था मुझे

जब भी इस कैलेंडर को देखता हूँ
लगता है जैसे वक़्त थम गया है
महसूस होता है जैसे
बीती तारीखें वापस लौट आई हैं

एक सुकून मिलता है दिल को
के बीता हुआ कल जाते जाते
कुछ सुनहरी तारीखों की
यादें छोड़ गया है

Monday, January 31, 2011

Little joys of life…

Ever since I started working, life has, in a way, come to a standstill. Office, work, party and sleep. That seems to have become the routine. In between all this, sometimes there is a cup of tea at the neighbourhood tea stall where conversations segue from the most inspiring to completely banal. During one such discussion last week, an interesting topic came up. A topic that brought back the nostalgia of college, of the years we had spent growing up and of the dreams we had seen.

This tea stall is a place where tea costs Rupees 6 and the conversations are free but priceless. But the best part is that here we can exercise our credit limit endlessly. This is the reason why the conversation began. We realised we were Rupees 30 short and we told the owner we would pay him later. But just then, someone asked for another cup and as a chain reaction, so did everyone else. Somebody in the group just mentioned, “do you remember the way we used to run short of cash when we were students?”

Memories came flooding back. I remembered the time we used to sneak out of home to catch a late night show. The time when neighbourhood tea stalls used to be our stronghold. Someone dug up the memories of getting drenched in the rain and binging on any kind of edible, cooked substance that was classified food. The time when one cigarette was shared between 4 people and Old Monk was the warmest companion of winters. A lavish birthday party would only mean “you will be fully fed” and weddings at friends’ places were always welcome because it gave us limitless access to food. On the days of an absolute cash crunch, we would share one plate of idly or a dosa or a sandwich between three people, with everyone aiming for the lion’s share. We would borrow friends’ bikes to drop pretty girls home, in the hope that something constructive would materialise. With some people, it was always “pay for me now and I will pay you later” when we went to the movies. That “later” never came. The hassles of exams and attendance brought back incidents that we would have rather forgotten. But looking back, it seemed fun. There were deadlines and curfew timings at home, but post that was when the fun began. A mobile phone was a luxury with call rates that meant we could only give missed calls. For the ones with girlfriends, it meant huge (by student standards) bills. Which in turn meant that we would have to lie at home for extra cash, and innovative lies at that!
Playing pranks on teachers and creating a ruckus was commonplace and so was the resultant “get out of my class”.

If I start making a list, I will probably run into hundreds of pages. But the important part is that we all realised that somewhere, along the years, we have probably forgotten how much those little, insignificant moments meant and how much we have missed them in the work life. Those years seemed so long back in the past!

It rekindled a flame, the embers of which, were dying out and as I end this piece, I will just say that let’s not allow anything to interrupt the little joys of life because these are the moments one savours. Let us raise a toast to a promise that we will live and breathe such moments every day. What say?

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Kaash...

Intezaar hai mujhe tumhara

Kyon, yeh pata nahi

Bas aisa lagta hai jaise

Bina tumhare zindagi mein koi khalal hai



Kehne ko toh roushan hai yeh zindagi

Par zehen ke kisi koney mein

Ek gehra andhera jaise

Ghar kar baitha hai



Yaad aati hai tumhari jab bhi

Ek khushi ki leher daud jaati hai mayoosi ke beech

Aur pal bhar ko mann karta hai

Sameyt loon inhe tinka tinka karke



Par jaise yaadon ki raet pe

Likha tumhara naam

Gumm ho jata hai

Haqeeqat ki aandhi mein



Ghadiyaan lamha lamha kar beet jaati hain

Par na tumhari khabar aati hai

Aur na hi intezaar ke samundar mein

Saahil kahin dikhta hai



Pata nahi kashti ko sahara milega

Yaa doob jayegi isi samundar mein

Bas itni ummed hai ki kal jab aankh khule

Toh tum paas baithi ho..kaash!