Silly English transformations…

The aim of this blog is to enlighten the humble reader about a disturbing trend that I am seeing in the usage of the English language of late. A few months back I was surprised to see a laptop being called a “lappie” in a top business school in India. Dismissing this usage as a business school lingo, I didn’t pay much attention to it except for laughing at it. More recently, I came to understand that the usage of this word is much more spread out that than I thought. Common non-business school going civilians are using this word now. I heard this word being used 5 times in the last two weeks and two of the five times; it was guys who used it.

I am convinced that this transformation was coined by a woman. Like a dog became a doggie, a laptop became a lappie. The justification by this woman in question would have been “It sounds sooooo cuteeeeeee”. And her boyfriend in order to show that he is of the sensitive kind also decided to go along with this usage. And that’s how it caught on. Business schools often are the places to “lap” up such kind of lingo. With this trend setting in, don’t be surprised to see a mobile phone being called a “moby”, the windows operating system being called a “windy” or a “wendy” in the near future. Let’s ponder for a while and give the laptop the respect it deserves. If you really want to name your laptop something, call it something manly like a Rocky. If you prefer a woman’s name, call that laptop a Maria Sharapova or even a Mallika Sherawat, but for heavens sake don’t call it a lappie.

The Devil also enlightened me a few weeks back that a new word called “ortho-conso“ has slowly crept into the daily usage which apparently stood for orthodox-conservative. I don’t know why or who came up with this one. Not much extra effort is really required in saying orthodox-conservative instead of “orthoconso”. However, I could put this system to a very good use. Swearing can be made very effective by using this technique. The best part is that the party being sworn at wouldnt even guess the meaning of the word. :-)

Return of the January trips and sadistic games….

As usual, I have multiple things to talk about after another gap thanks mainly to my laziness of typing out thoughts. Still would prefer to write my thoughts rather than type them out.

Like every January for the past the 3 years, pretty much the whole gang somehow managed to make it to a weekend trip. In 2005, it was Munnar; 2006 it was Devbagh and this time around it was the Sandur mines. Thanks to Chilli’s dad for making this one a great trip. The enormous amount of food consumed over the weekend is also worth mentioning here. The “devil” and “dhi only one” were noticeably absent but Rajneesh happened to grace this trip. Mary and MJ are also very conspicuous in this photo :-).



And here is a glimpse of the mines

---Change of subject here---

Guys tend to come up with the most sadistic and painful of games sometimes but still enjoy playing these to the hilt. The game that tops this list is called “Choochand” (in kannada, I hope the spelling is right) or “rappa – rappi” which is its Marathi equivalent. Most guys have played this game as kids. The game is very simple. You take a tennis ball and hit other guys with this ball as hard as possible. The guys are allowed to stay only a within a small area which makes the chance of getting a good shot very high. Obviously, this is an excruciatingly painful game. And god alone help you if you are caught unawares right next to the guy holding the ball. The last thing you remember is the devil like smile on his face ready to nearly kill you and you praying that the guy would miss just this one time. And then you suddenly feel that pain on mostly the back or the back of your legs. You reach home in agony and you notice a big swelling and apply some iodex to it and hope that you will be ok in time for the next day’s play. You also swear to get back at this guy. The next day also you come back home with another swelling but probably a smile this time. The smile obviously indicates that you did get back at the other guy.

Also if there are some new kids or younger kids in the group, you cut them some slack and add some rules like if you touch the guy holding the ball he can’t hit you or you can hit the new kid only with your weaker hand. The pain in the game could be raised a notch by using red coloured MRI rubber balls which can have a much more devastating effect than a tennis ball.

The only thing that can be said in defence of this classical game is that it increases your resistance to torture and its benefits would become the most apparent if you were a spy and were caught in the enemy camp. Lastly, I feel that this game should definitely be showcased on that MTV program called jackass.