New Vocabulary of the New Indian

Ingleez duday

Off late, I mean very late, I have observed a strange shift in vocabulary of the Indian people with respect to media, most notably in the Tamil populace. A lot of new words have crept up to unimaginable places and are at the brink of “extinction by overuse”. Careful perusal through the invariable marquees across all the channels would probably result in a whole new dictionary, but here are my top 5 so far.

5. Frenzzzz, Songzzz, Plzzz etc.: Is this some age of equality where people feel the usage of the last letter of the English alphabet is fading out? Or doez it feel juzt awzum to uze the letter? (yuck). Why all this affection to a sleepy letter people? Competing with terms such as “gud mrng” “I luv u” and “gud nite”, the z-maratho(r)n has invariably messed up the number 9 on cell phones. And gap10 is adding to the effect with his accent.

“Frnzzz, Romanzzz, and countrymenzzzz, lend me ur earzzzz”

RIP Mr. Shakespeare.

4. Mind-Blowing: Yesterday, I was searching the synonyms for the word “loser” all over the net. I finally made up a really fitting one – Reality show judge. I hate (most of) these guys because:

• They are absolutely positively untalented (I am OK with that, really)
• They have the most pathetic English (I am clearly OK with that)
• They don’t know they are absolutely positively untalented and have the most pathetic English

And out of all the adjectives in the language, they pick up this – Mind-Blowing. Can’t they just stick to good, V. good and V. V. Good? And doesn’t the usage of the term implicitly place a constraint on the user that (s)he must possess a brain? And to top it all they mask it using more absurd terms like “Energy Level”, “Performance”, “expressions” et cetera. One of these days, I wish, their mind really blows off.

3. Missed Call: If I remember correctly (Hell, I do), this was a term used to denote the calls that were not attended to. Those days, missed call was a result of the receiving person’s inability to pick up the phone because he was either:

• Away from the phone
• Busy in a meeting
• Dirt scared of the caller

Cut to present. Technology has advanced so much and people have become so brilliant that they actually know the delay between initiation of call and the time the phone activates the ring tone to alert the other end. And this is the same time that the cut off the call they have placed – just slow enough to make a registry entry as missed call and just fast enough to prevent even Neo “The One” Anderson picking it up.

Last week, I tuned accidentally into a “trade fair show” in Vasanth TV or Imayam TV or … (Does it even matter?). There I heard one of the sellers saying that she offered missed call orders. I was confused and found that only I was confused. It seems it is a regular business of theirs. For old schoolers like me, this is what it is – Clients would “place a missed call” to their sellers (how bizarre is that). And the sellers would call back to that number to take the order. Here you have people who are going to be doing business in thousands of Rupees and are finding it tough to make a single call. Great stuff.

(And for the records, the product was “Computer” Sambrani – a worthy contender here indeed.)

2. Dedication: Ah yes, DEDICATION. I’ll explain by giving the situation. There is a caller on the phone. He asks for a song from the film Kuruvi (crime number 1). After the host (ya, those guys who always buy T-shirts of smaller sizes) asks why he needs that song, he says he likes Vijay (crime number 2). The host then tells him that the song will be played. Now, what this guy does is that he interrupts the host and tells him that he wants to dedicate the song to his friends and family people (crime number 3). I mean, WHAT THE HELL! Point number one – The caller is not a Mozart or a Beethoven or a Rahman that he has composed something so that he can dedicate his efforts to his chums. All that is his here is the 30 paise he has spent for calling (which by itself is subject to debate). Point number 2: OK, accepted that the dedication part was a overdone version of familial affection. But the song he has asked – KURUVI (gulp!). That, I am as sure as surity is, is no way a composition from a Mozart or a Beethoven or a Rahman.

A nice way of attaching your name with some really good piece of music in order to tarnish its charm. I will make no comments about the tampered version of the word (kadicate et al.)

1. Rock/Rocking/Rocks/Rokz/Rox/(Rockage for some): This word has to be it. To think of it, I had used the word quite generously till about a couple of years ago. Now the mere thought makes me cringe. Blame it on the Indian Television again, especially the Real(ly so hazardous that you will choke to death by just looking at the colour spectrum of the participant costumes)ity shows. No other word infuriates me so much nowadays as this one. Rocking performance, rocking song, Ajith rocks, this rocks, that rox… phew. Poor Mr. Dwayne Johnson.

The other day, some wise guy had sent me a link that read “Gujarat Rocks”. I was shattered. I thought “not another earthquake in the same state!”. (Un)fortunately, the link lead me to an Orkut community that extolled Gujarat.

Another one – One of my acquaintances had moved into a new house and I just messaged him asking about the house. He instantly replied “the house rocks…”. I asked him “Then why the hell did you take it?” before I realized what he meant.

And not to mention the innumerable “gangs” across the state. Never heard of them? Tune into some music channel and you will find something like, Golden guys, Silver sizzlers, Bronze boyz, Thuvakudi Terrors etc (of course followed by that dreaded word).

Something has to be done before the noun form of the word becomes obscure and the British lullabies become pop songs.

P.Z: I dedicate this post to myself bcoz I don’t want to slander anyone’s name. Plzz don’t post commentz such as “rocking post, mind-blowing entry” etc. I know it is.

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