Plastic English

  I was bewildered when a young junior colleague handed me an application for leave ‘for attending son-in-law’s marriage.’

“Correct this”, I said handing the application back to him.

“Sorry sir, the date has been finalised, it can not be corrected now,” he protested.

‘Er…I meant this, not the date,” I said, pointing at where “son-in-law” was written on the paper.

Looking confused, he said, “What is there to correct, sir? He is my saala, the son of my in-laws”. What I presumed to be a casual slip, turned out to be a matter of conviction for him, backed by what seemed to him an unassailable logic.

            English language always lends itself to innovative uses by people for whom it is not their first language. But no one employs such ingenuity as do the denizens of Indian officialdom. Consider the predicament of the gentleman, single-handedly manning a remote outpost, when the condition of his ailing wife deteriorated. This was the text of the telegram he sent to his head office, `Wife serious, send substitute.’ Or imagine the shock the husband must have received when he called up the office of his wife, who worked as the head cashier in a bank. After a long wait he was politely informed, “Madame is giving delivery in the strong room, Please call after sometime.”

            These are not instances of Orwell’s `Doublespeak’, nor are they examples of double entendre employed by creative writers.  Forced to use a foreign tongue in a demanding work situation, the effervescent babus unwittingly produce these gems by the dozen.

             But the language does not always get the better of the babus. As the following example will depict, with some amount of ingenuity, the language can be manipulated to the best advantage of the user.

            This was a time when license raj was still a way of life, and not a term of derision. The babus ruled the roost, then. A man came to an office to apply for, what else, a license. The babu demanded his pound of flesh. As the price seemed a bit steep, the man set out to explore other possibilities. The MLA of his area came to his rescue and took him to the minister, who turned out to be still more cooperative. The minister asked for the application and wrote ‘Approved’ on it. When the man came to the babu next morning to collect his license, the babu had already added ‘not’ before the word ‘approved’. Exasperated, the man realized his mistake and asked in a conciliatory tone if anything could be done at that stage. The babu reassured him that
nothing was impossible there, but only the price would be much more than what had been asked for initially. After money changed hands the babu asked the man to come the next morning to collect his license.  The man came the next day, and the babu showed him his application. The ‘Not approved’ now read `Note Approved’. The license was issued without any further delay.

The Cat Must Live

There is a popular proverb "Curiosity kills the cat", which is used to warn
against being too curious, lest it may prove very harmful. But when it comes to being inquisitive about others, no one can beat us Indians, especially the middle class Indians. 

You meet someone after a long gap, or someone is introduced to you: what kind of conversation ensues? 

More likely than not you are asked about what your children are doing; where are they employed; what was the JEE rank of your daughter; where did she take the 

engineering coaching; where have you purchased your flat; 2 BHK or 3 BHK and so on and so forth. Your interlocutor is not satisfied until you are stripped bare of all your personal details.    

What is the purpose behind this trampling on your privacy? In my analysis, this is to compare his 'achievements' with yours. If,  in his estimate, he is ahead of you, his conversation suddenly turns smug and pompous, even a few theories are thrown in about where you might have 'gone wrong'. Thank you buddy, I am not interested.

If somehow your inquirer feels that you have 'surpassed' him in these important areas, he will proffer many uninvited explanations for his relative failure: What kind of postings I've got, see I could not give the attention to my children's studies like you all did, blah blah blah. Come on buddy, I'm not interested in this either.

Lalu Prasad Yadav once said that the people travelling in train are more social and they gossip a lot, making the journey lively, unlike the air travelers who remain tight-lipped throughout the journey. During train journeys you will often come across strangers, who are interested in your complete bio-data. All their conversation will point to unearth your material worth. If you don't measure upto him, he will stop the
conversation and find someone else.

I am not advocating the culture of 'stiff upper lip' by which the Englishmen are known. It is said that,  to avoid curiosity of a stranger they would hide their faces with the newspapers. No, not something like this, but please do not be nosey about others. Let a lively conversation ensue, and be happy with whatever 'information' you get from the context of the talk, without prying into someone's privacy.   

Telephone Travails

When Alexander Graham Bell invented telephone in 1875, did he have any inkling of the overarching influence his invention would have on the world of business? Now telephone stands as a golden mean between the demanding and wasteful physical contact and the cold and impersonal medium of mails. It has the ‘human touch’, the immediacy of the message and two-way flow of the communication, in addition to the fact that distance does not matter to it. No wonder modern business has lapped up the machine as the most ideal tool for furthering customer service.

Just wait for a second. If you unconditionally agree to whatever I have said so far, then in all probability, you do not use telephones, or its modern avatar, mobile phones. If you use them, like all of us do, then you probably have your pockets full of complaints about the use of telephones/ mobiles in customer service.

 

Here is a sampling of my bitter tales. The toll free numbers starting with 1800 look very enticing till you key in the numbers. The number punching never stops: you are to make choice of your language, the service that you want, your identification, validity of your card, all these in numbers. Anything that can be represented in numbers is extracted from you. Due to unsteady fingers/ fading lights/ lack of clarity or your plain nervousness you falter and punch a wrong number and your woe gets doubled, you start the punching game all over again. If you are efficient and lucky enough to punch the right keys you reach at the doorstep of the customer service executive. Your whole purpose of the day was to talk to this gentleman/ lady with a golden touch, so why this clutter, you wonder.

With your heart leaping in delight you wait for the executive to respond and right all your wrongs, when the mechanical voice reminds you “Sorry, our customer service executive is busy responding to other customers’ calls, you are in a queue, you will be attended shortly”.  Good enough, you comfort yourself as the computer switches on the piped music to relax your tensed nerves. After a while the music stops and you hope to hear the human voice at last, but no, the earlier announcement is played out once again: you are still in the queue,, some more music. This game goes on and on, and if you have not yet banged the phone out of exasperation, you hear a voice indicating that your saviour is at hand. But he does not accept you at your face value, he wants proof. You ferret out your mother’s maiden name, your date of birth, your PAN Card number and so on. On passing this identity test you speak out your problem to the executive. After a lot of Q & A you are told that you had to visit the City Customer Care Centre to resolve your issue.

"Is there anything else I can do for you? Thanks for calling.....Have a nice day", you hear the voice taunting you.