On distractions

The mother is a strong believer in the power of distraction. When the brother and I would start squabbling in the back of a car as kids, she would suddenly say excitedly:

Look at all those trees! Let's count how many we go past!

Or:

Why don't we count how many Maruti 800s we pass on the road?!

Quite a few, as it turns out, when you were driving in Delhi in the 1990s. So by the time we got bored of counting, we would have forgotten what we were fighting about, or even that we were fighting at all.

The brother and the sister-in-law visited me this past weekend, and at some point the three of us got into a heated debate over something while waiting for our desi Chinese takeout to be prepared. I can't remember what we were arguing over, but it was quite clear the three of us were not going to agree anytime soon. And suddenly my brother turns to his wife and exclaims:

Look at all those red lights! Let's count them!

His wife stared at him utterly confounded, as I burst out laughing. By the time she understood what her husband had been trying to do, an entirely different argument looked likely to erupt.

Luckily for my brother's life and marriage, our food was pronounced ready at that very opportune moment.

We may have to prepone that

I can't remember how old I was when this happened, but at some point in my childhood, the father came home and asked me, "Did you know prepone isn't a real word?!" Shock and awe was felt.


Turns out, he was interacting with a Japanese company at the time, and in the pre-Google days, they would take to the Oxford dictionary to make sure they understand every word of English written by the Indians. The word prepone, as it happens, was not listed in the dictionary. It was a perfectly appropriate word Indians had invented, which, in the decades since that conversation with my father has in fact been added to the Oxford Dictionary. Mirriam-Webster, on the other hand, still considers it a word they're "watching." And Blogger's spellcheck clearly doesn't recognise it.

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I have an American coworker who has worked in and with too many countries for his own good. He speaks Spanish fluently, and has huge German and Portuguese dictionaries sitting on his desk. He once spent several months in India on a project, and has opinions on several things about India as a result.


He sits close to my desk, and is able to hear a lot of my conversations at work, and observations about them frequently ensue (a favour I equally frequently return). He'll comment on how my voice automatically sounds more Indian if I'm talking to someone from the subcontinent, he'll chuckle at the first hint of a turn of phrase I might use that may not be native to the US (did y'all know "cribbing" is not a word Americans use?! They say grumbling, it seems), he finds it hilarious that Indian Standard Time has "that whole 30 minute thing going on" (so what if his country has half a dozen time zones, and an incomprehensible Daylight Savings thing that some states don't even follow), and he loves to talk about the words Indians have invented. Like prepone.


So this morning, I was on a conference call. I stayed on mute for the most part, but had a 30 second update to provide in the middle. As I finished my update, and went back on mute, he suddenly piped up.

You had the perfect opportunity to use the word prepone and you squandered it!

What? What did I say?

Didn't you just say you may have to move up something?

Yes, but...

Why would you not say prepone? This was the perfect time to use it and spread the use of the word!

I didn't think of...

You're becoming too American in the way you speak, that's what the problem is.

*gasp* I am not!

Maybe I am, y'all. This is very sad.