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
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