Do you get the nuances of Textese?

Have you seen that ad where a wife loses her husband in a crowded train station and discovers the love for him instead? Platinum day of love. Well, if such a day does exists, N’s was when he saw me polish off an entire plate of chicken biryani with absolutely no qualms, fuss or mention of diet (unlike regular girls he says). On the other hand mine was when N corrected my spelling of ‘rejuvenate’. I’m a ‘Grammar Nazi, and used to maintain a standing rule that I wouldn’t date guys who txt lyk dis. So, when N caught me in my momentary lapse of reason, I fell for him. Period.

Textese or SMS language as we popularly know it now, developed at the time when phones were as big and heavy as TV remotes and one needed powerful fingers to press the keys. Text messages were expensive and there were only 160 characters to express oneself before the phone balance dipped. It was a handy and made testing faster. Now with Wi-Fi messaging, feather light phones, touch screens, and other paraphernalia you think tesxtese would have died a natural death, but it hasn’t. It has merely evolved. Textese can be a bane or boon of today’s society depending on which team you are in; the Nazis or the busy bees that don’t have the extra second to add the ‘O’ before they reply ‘K’ to the essay you just sent them. I wonder what they do with all the extra time.

Smart phones have made us extremely lazy. We cringe to pick up the phone and have an actual conversation. We’d rather text with our own textese, our unique language with customised vocabulary and personal style. We devise new norms to adhere to and to judge others by. For instance, purists would tell you that the exclamation mark was traditionally used to indicate surprise. When you shout ‘surprise! ,‘at a surprise birthday party for example. Or is used to show vehemence, like “Get off my spot!” But off late, the punctuation mark has been going on overkill. “Hey!!! What are you doing?!! “, says the friend who frankly doesn’t give a damn or the dramatic ‘thank you!!!” when a person compliments one’s profile picture. Well, I have just failed to get long along with these excessive exclamation users. Maybe my phlegmatic personality is allergic to their overly sunny disposition.

 A ‘hey’ with a single ‘y’ has become an unenthusiastic, akin to calling a stranger on the road. ‘Heyy’ shows interest. ‘Heyyy’ is borderline flirting and ‘Heyyyyy’is just plain creepy. Many would agree that ‘Lol’ (laugh out loud) hardly stands for what it started out with. Now ‘Lol’ is the new ‘okay’. “Hey guess what, I bumped l bumped into Neha. Remember her?’ “Oh ya.lol”.  At times it’s measly politeness, especially when a friend says something supposedly witty and you aren’t too amused.  Likewise, a plain ha-ha has become lame, fake almost. The next time you want to find out if your joke is genuinely rib tickling look for the ‘Hahaha’. More ha’s the better, except when it’s Muahaha. That’s Joker having the last laugh.

The other day I was chatting with a friend on Whatsapp and had to cross the road. So I quickly typed ‘brb’ and shut the window. Fifteen minutes later when I checked my phone, he had left me a sermon on how the acronym for ‘be right back’ is used only in shady chat rooms and not with close friends anymore. Really? News to me.

You think teachers must be a happy lot, with all phones coming with an in-built dictionary. It requires determination to defy the auto-correct and get a spelling wrong. Unfortunately, they are far from it. Exam papers and class assignments now lay strewn with acronyms and shoddy spellings. While students type out superlative text messages on autopilot, the same dictionary slowly erases the memory of all spellings from their brains. Come exams, they stutter and start scribbling to mask their mistakes.

To text with ease or text traditional?  To nit-pick or let it go. Is he being friendly or flirty?  Goodnight or nite? That’s the question. Maybe the Emoji will be our answer.

-Originally published in The New

Indian Express, Bangalore on 31st October 2015

'Are we staring at our phones too much?

My husband, lets call him N is what you could call a ‘screen junkie’. It’s a deadly affliction that can damage a few grey cells, distort vision and even break up a marriage. He has this perpetual need to stare at some screen all the time; TV, a phone, a laptop, anything. A recent study concluded that the average youngster in India spends 10 hours of his day watching some screen. They were talking about N.

Its 8:oo AM .The phone buzzes signaling a flurry of incoming emails. With eyes half shut and crouched in the darkest corner of the sofa with a teacup precariously hanging down the crook of his hand, N sifts through the mails, mentally planning the day (that’s what he claims). While sitting on the pot, it’s Facebook scrolling time. In between he attends to a few Whatsapp pings. At office it’s another painful eight hours of drubbing away on the laptop, multitasking with several pages open. Back home at 6 pm, he flops on the recliner and starts playing FIFA on the Xbox, his eyes transfixed on the animated Arsenal men. And as he ‘distresses’ I sit beside him and talk to his right ear, recounting the day with a motley of news, gossip, and grievances.

 When we first moved into our apartment all the furniture were arranged against the wall, pointing at the TV, as if to say that the guests who come in should also watch the on going cricket match with minimal interruption. I suggested a conversation pit, to arrange the furniture in right angles so that we wouldn’t have to lean forward while talking or talk to each other’s side profiles. N finally gave in, but not without making some disparaging comments about womenfolk having to talk all the time instead of just chilling. Our conversations are now punctuated by sitcom laugh tracks and Arnab hollers through our dinners. Sometimes we call it a day by binge watching some television show on the laptop.  The iPad is another story. Everyone I know strongly condemns the use of it by children until they have one of their own. With parenthood the iPad transforms into this magical device that gives one some ‘me time while our child is busy learning to make cup cakes with Barbie.

Stuck at the traffic signal or waiting in a queue?  We fish out our smartphone and start reading an inane forward on a chat group or analyse our friend’s photo shopped display picture. What starts of checking one trailer on YouTube slowly cascades into a chain of random videos. Time flies by. The other day at the endoscopy Centre, while I was busy choking on the tube that was lunging into my stomach, the doctor was hell bent on giving me a tour of my insides on the TV monitor to my side.  A screen to the rescue once again. “Can you see your heart pulsating against your esophagus?” he said. My dying wish was not be a witness to own heart stop beating.

Until the smart phone happened I loved sitting in airports for hours, for the sheer people watching potential it offers- the whole gamut of human idiosyncrasies and relationships on display.  But these days I catch the young engrossed in swiping right and left on Tinder profiles much like a videogame while married souls like me kill time by checking what’s for dinner on the ’Fresh Menu’ app.

Whatever happened to good old reading and staring into empty space? Spa rituals and Suryanamaskars must make way for the more important digital detox. When I did suggest it to N the other day, he looked at me flummoxed as though I was accusing him of infidelity.

It’s unfortunate that for most of us work is on the laptop. For instance, this column isn’t going to write by itself. But have you caught up on this new Game of Thrones fan theory that is doing the rounds? Maybe I will it read now, while my brain gently warms up.

Originally published in the column 'Pop Pourri', The New Indian Express, Bangalore 29th Aug 2015