Look, English, I am fond of you. No, seriously, I am.

I would hate to have someone do the dirty on you. I don’t know if you’ve been keeping an ear to the ground as I have. If not, I think you ought to. Things are getting dangerously bad for you dude! No, you’re not going to die. Its much, much worse!

They’re going to cut your body parts out one by one and replace each with something a lot smaller and insubstantial. The replaced parts will be sterile and passionless. They’re going to make a distorted pygmy out of you, ugly and misshapen. I don’t know if you go in much for preening in front of the mirror but at the rate at which things are going, preening in front of the mirror will be a thing of the past for you. Unless you develop an asbestos lined gut in the interim so that you don’t feel sick looking at yourself in all your revolting hideousness.

There is a new predator out there called SMS English. I see that you are smiling indulgently at me as one would smile at a distraught two year old whose daddy got off the train to fill the water bottle and the train moved off. I am not that two year old. You are not the daddy who jumps nonchalantly onto a moving train and is restored to his family heroically. You are two ticks away from becoming the asinine daddy who genuinely misses the train- in more ways than one!

Get that silly smile off your smug map! Don’t you understand what perils you face?

When youngsters use abortions like tym, som1 and u2, one scrunches up one’s nose in fastidious distaste, sighs, shakes one’s head and gets busy with the disinfectant and mop. Now, with the young- at –heart becoming tech- savvy, you witness the nauseating spectacle of a grand- dad sending a text to his obnoxious grandchild asking the worm, “wt tym wl u b bk?”

It is enough to make one feel ill!

Not fazed, eh? You think this is a fad? You think that’s only a grandparent’s foolish ploy to fit in and be cool to his grandkids? You fatuous donkey! I am beginning to feel you deserve whatever you are going to get.

Can’t you see how dangerous this trend is? Has any civilization ever seen a grandparent adopting the values of a grandchild? Hasn’t it always been the other way round? Well, yes, that has created problems too but those are manageable challenges. This is giving me the jitters… as should it you, if you had half a brain!

Okay, swallow this one, I dare you!

Unpleasant as it is, the evidence of an informal conversation (??) in SMS English between two people, at least one of whom should have known better, is still tolerable. But when you see this language used (hold on to your hat here and grab a firm hold of that tree with the other hand) in FORMAL BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS, dare you use any other word to describe it but grotesque?

You still can’t see now how bad it is, can you? If steps aren’t taken soon (and the hell with the proper channels dammit, this is WAR!), it’ll be too late. Civilization is already up to its blinkered eyes into a melting pot. The thing you are trying to hang on to is not a straw, it is the ladle which will help pour the melted civilization into hideous little pebbles which rude upstarts would hurl irreverently at the unsuspecting, giving them painful black eyes.

You’re still smiling?! Oh, what it is to have to deal with a fool! Wait, I’ll settle you yet!

A decade ago, English and the vernacular behaved like gentlemen. They kept graciously and grandiosely to themselves, meeting occasionally with all the old world grace and and aloof pomp of the centuries that hung by their garments like worn out tassels. The vernacular was expressed haughtily in its own script and the Latin alphabet was allowed to put its nose in the air and was left alone for English users. That is no longer true.

Today, the hunted has turned predator! The boundaries between English and vernacular Indian languages has been wiped out. Indeed, sticking conscientiously to the literal definition of vernacular (commonly used language), one is compelled to acknowledge that the vernacular has changed to an Indian language written using English alphabets! Hence the uncouth grandchild replies to the grandparent’s text with a lethal text of his/ her own by writing, “pata nahi. so jaao.” (I don’t know. Go to sleep.)

Are you listening? Hello… hello….! Hellllllllooooooo! What’s happened to you!! Are you alright? Can you breathe?! What! You swooned?!

Oh, you insufferable, daft fish!

Picture: Mine
Picture: Mine