Propriety Warfare

Text in pink has been used to depict errors made by the protagonists that are the pillars of this post, or deliberate errors, intended to be a mockery, by the narrator. In no way, should these be construed as grammar gaffes by the author, since he is, let's face it, mind-blasting!

In recent times, the most compelling example I could use to convince people that correct English is of significant value, would be an email sent by a head honcho, of the organization I work for, to a bunch of clients, with our team in CC. And the sentence which must have made a remarkable impact:

"This application release is of great impotence to us."

I'd seen mails earlier, where this person characteristically spells the word, important, as "importent", and on this exemplary occasion, MS-WORD must have simply auto-"corrected" the (apparently unimportant) 'r'.

I had always presumed that English would be the logical choice of communication at work, given that you'd be working with people who do not necessarily speak the language of the place that you hail from. I've been accustomed to using English for quite a while now, and I'm given to thinking in English too, and subsequently, if need be, convert it to another language.

In college, I must admit, I was initially unprepared for my Internal Combustion Engines lab staff telling me "Thambi, anthu machine on panittu, lever thirambu, appram reading edthuko, athikku appram calculations panni, foo-yel level eppidi decrease aakuven sollikkudu". Don't ask me for a translation, I can only tell you that "foo-yel" was supposed to be "fuel".

The only advantage was that after four years of this, I actually did pick up a smidgen of Tamil and Malayalam. Yes, Malayalam is my mother tongue, and I'm not even remotely fluent at it, and you can go ahead and say "Malayali aayittu Malayalam arriyithilla" in the derogatory tone, I've heard that enough from the snooty Malayalis, to develop an acquired immunity to it, and I really don't care!

However, work was going to be different, it had to be, this was IT after all!

Project conference call with onsite and offshore teams - "Ante August lo enhancement cheppisthinaara, athi ella cheyaalo process cheppu". Epic Fail!

And thus began an unscheduled education in yet another language.

But onsite, Amreeka, the big U, and the S, and the A, here it's got be English, and only English, and nothing but the good correct English!

Here go some of the gems I have experienced here :-

A Lead to a Mexican guy - "Arre woh Sterling mein order daal ke dekho, hota hai ki nahi, phir usme kuch appeasement bhi de do". Yes, I'm sure he understood.

A Lead to a Tamil guy, whose knowledge of Hindi is limited to "Dil toh pagal ghe" and "Jab tak ghe jaan" - "Arre yeh return ka kaunsa table mein jaata hai aur journal kaise update hota hai, tumko pata hai kya, thoda bata ke do isko" - Charming, amazing, Kuch kuch hota ghe!

Team discussion involving one Mexican and the rest Telugu colleagues - "oka .com order RDC nundi source ayi dani transfer order fail ayela place chey" - Brilliant, superb, Oka laila kosam kavaaliye!

Team discussion involving one Indian and rest Mexican coworkers - "Puedes poner una Delivery orden, despues la pones como Exception y le haces reship. Necesitamos checar las transacciones generadas." - Yes, absolutely, tu eres culito!

To an employee giving notice - "are U aware of that you belongs to India?" - Was she paid for or was it an ancestral inheritance?

"do the KT" - 'Doing' a KT is wrong on more than one level!

"He wantedly messed up the program." - My ears bleed! Try 'deliberately' or 'intentionally'; 'wantedly' is not even a word!

Email sent to an environment support team - Yesterday, I have sent an email to the team  and requested about the anyone have physical cards. However no one reply me back on this request, only Musa have 2 cards (Discover \Visa French).

I think someone have Debit cards.

I also see regular instances of "loosing revenue" and "are we is getting the environment available today", and I'm done with the examples because I cannot claw at my eyes any more.

I'm not saying your English has to be of the Rajdeep Sardesai or Karan Thapar finesse, but is basic grammar and sentence construction too much to ask for? And if you say that I must have had an Oxford education, for the record, I was born and brought up in Bihar, I had the same educational opportunities as most of my contemporaries, and I still am better at English than many of them put together, and you can blame my mom and her subscription to Readers' Digest, and a love for reading that culminated from that and Enid Blyton in the school library.

At the very least, if you make an effort to be considerate to others and attempt to restrict yourself to a common language, with time, your ability and grasp of the language does get better. And in mixed company, sticking to English ensures no one gets alienated (I've had front row seats for this!). Plus a good command of the language helps with the ladies too. Ask Katrina Kaif, Deepika Padukone, Gal Gadot or Barbara Mori ;) I know, I know, please come in an orderly fashion for autographs and memorabilia.

Not being infallible (yet), I'm prone to mistakes too, but those are more often due to a lack of focus than neglect of the language. Every once in a while, I misspell 'occassion' and 'occurence', forgetting momentarily whether it's two c's or two s's, and where there are two r's! Until a couple of years ago, I used to regularly mix up the usage of "its" and "it's". Periodically, I still use "whose", when the required term is "who's". Sometimes, I'm not even sure of the correct word or pronunciation. For instance, the examples given here are intentionally mis-spelt, or is it mis-spelled? And are "direction" and "dimension" pronounced with a "di-" as in "die", or a "dee-" as in "dim"?

But whatever I draft, I do give it multiple reads, until I'm sure that it's all correct, to the extent of my knowledge, and only then does that missive see the light of the day.

Then again, there are those with the disfigured definition of decorum. What sets these apart are not the grammatically hideous sentences or typographical errors, but the big-foot-in-bigger-mouth syndrome.

For instance, during a break in a particularly long requirements meeting with business associates, talk veers round to family. A manager asks one of the ladies about her kids, and she mentions she has two daughters. The bloke's response - "Haha, I'm very lucky, I have two sons!" And he continues to chuckle, (unsurprisingly) oblivious to the stunned silence. Watch how I turn a 2-syllable word into a 6-syllable one - Re-e-e-e-e-ally?

If you think it is tough to top the brazen ignominy of that indiscretion, think again. There are some who wear their profession, and in some particularly unusual (unusual, because I do not have a more appropriate word) cases, their religion on their sleeve. How often do you meet someone in the gym, who'd walk up to you and say "Hi, I'm Sean, and I'm a doctor." Maybe not so out-of-place for a complete stranger, you say? I'll accept that. How about someone who stands up in a workplace meeting, with participants from multiple ethnicities, and says, "Hi, my name is omitted-for-obvious-reasons, and I'm Hindu and a Green Card holder."? Now apart from his name, someone please tell me which of the other two facts were relevant. Or was he looking for lavish attention and a gold star?

I'm not sure if such proffered pieces of information qualify as small talk, or if they are a verbal punch to the personal choices of those whom the information is being proffered to. Or is it that this display of going nuts over your faith or your residential status is an exuberant outpouring of your enthusiasm? I'm not saying you should not be excited about it, but when you use it as an introduction, what kind of message are you portraying?

It's said that your faith, and/or what you work at, is what defines you? How could your profession or your religion possibly give an accurate insight into what you are as a person? You could be Einstein, and it is still possible for you to be an asshole. You could be proficient with dozens of programming languages and software, and yet be an absolute nightmare to work with. You could be Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Zionist, and it still means nothing other than the name of a practice that you have decided to follow. Saying that you are an atheist, doesn't say anything about you, apart from the fact that you don't go to church or sing Jesus songs.

I'm a Malayali Christian, and I've met some of the most obnoxious, bigoted, ignorant, self-righteous, asinine and prejudiced people that are Malayali Christians. I've also met people who don't believe in God or religion, and some of these are the nicest, loving, friendly, open and warm people that I have known. One could argue semantics saying truly devout Christians are patient and merciful and blah blah blah, but going through the motions of a faith does not morph a sleeping coyote into a koala bear.

Blurting out stuff without careful forethought is not something I'm new to; the silliest being a quip about the iPhone being narcissistic that was a spur-of-the-moment thing (questions or comments on said anecdote are taboo here), and the most brash being an outburst during a meeting where a person who habitually comes in to work late was giving a speech, extolling the virtues of being punctual.

Do I regret the outburst? No.
It is plain hypocrisy to be preaching something you have absolutely no intention of practicing. And what does it say about your work ethic when you waddle in at 10:30AM, run away at 5PM, bill the client for 9 hours, and all that you do in the space of the day is check out the latest deals on electronics and holiday packages?
Plus there is something deeply disconcerting about being the only one present at a table of sixteen, on a work day morning, having to endure the disapproving glances of client counterparts who do come in on time.

Disclaimer: Any resemblance to the living, dead or soon-to-be-dead is purely coincidental.. Or just poorly covered up...

Hi, I'm Eby, and I'm human. "Regretably".