Every morning my mother used to wake me for school and wish me "Good Morning". On the other hand my first words would me "S**t, again itni jaldi subhah ho gayi. What’s so good about the morning." My mom would always scold me and say "subeh subeh god ka naam liya karo. Gandi gandi cheezon ka nahi." I dont know how it happened but soon I found myself in the habit of wishing people, "Morning". My mom would hear me greet teachers and other people in the same manner and she would always ask me "tum good kyo nahin bolti ho ?" And I would tell her "mom its understood Good hai saath mei bolne ki kya zarurat hai. People understand just like that."
Since we usually had these conversations at lunch she would remove the dal from my plate and say, "beta it is understood that rice hai to dal bhi hogi to khane kya zaruarat hai.Samajh lo ki saath mei dal bhi hai." I would then tell her, "mom itna lamba sentence bol kar time waste karne ki kya zarurat hai forget it shortcut me hi sabhi baat karte hai. Ye sab chalta hai." At that time my mom would smile and say, "Just a matter of time then the so called young generation will not require an English Teacher they will demand for a teacher who can teach them slang." Oh! I forgot to mention my mom would give me this lecture because she herself was a teacher. So I could understand her criticisms.
But today when I myself am in the same profession and that too teaching English I must confess that what my mom had said so many years ago has turned out to be true. We in our school days would merely trim some words but today we find it much easier to talk in the SMS lingo. Today all the words have been abbreviated by the mass for their convenience. So much so that at times we are unable to understand or what one is saying or writing. One such abbreviation is "LOL". I for first time spotted this word in the comments that people write on MS. So I simply thought that it must have been shortened for the word "love" but then I realized that the second 'L' was a bit out of place so I came out with a different answer and that was "lovely".
Until quite recently I used to read all the comments keeping this word in mind. Recently I was viewing some pics on MS and there was a comment on one of the pics which read as " What place is it... LOL". I read it with the same meaning in my mind. That night when I was sitting on the net I called my husband and showed him the comment and said "Accha hai yaar girls also lovely and boys also lovely. To handsome kaun hai? " My husband on seeing the word I was pointing at he said, "stupid it stands for 'Laughing Out Loud'. You don’t even know this much." On hearing the expansion I was really zapped for a minute and then I was like, "Hai Ram! Ye kya baat hoti hai. You mean to say that this sentence reads like 'where is this place ....laughing out loud. What’s so funny in the question??? Now that was like a LOL for me.
Actually I must say that Dhirubhai Ambani, if nothing else, with his Rs500/- mobile scheme made all Indians Mobile literate. At times when I am correcting copies of my students they seem to have written the answer in SMS format. However hard I try to eradicate this habit from them it never changes. They come up with a constant reply that, "Mam its quicker to write. "I keep telling them that it will be quicker for the examiner to cut your marks but then what to do its becoming hard day by day. Just a few days back I asked one of my students what he would write on the top while preparing a bio-data. He said, "Mam ASL (Age Sex Location)". I was like "God! They truly need a slang instructor. With every passing day it is becoming very difficult to keep up with these new words that are being discovered.
At times I feel I am the only person who has been left behind in this SMS race. Even my husband, who otherwise is dead against the so-called western influence, has bypassed me in this race. Quite recently he had gone out of station for an official tour. Since he busy in the meeting most of the time in the day, we usually used to communicate through messages. In one such message he wrote, "BTW, did you deposit all the bills." I read the message but could not understand the relevance of the word BTW. I used to use this word for the short of the word 'between', but here I could not make head or tail of this word. So when my hubby returned from his tour after a couple of days I asked him what he had meant by the word. He looked that the sms and said that it was short of the 'By The Way'. Then very sweetly he commented that this was the drawback of being an English teacher. Aap ko kabhi pata nahi chaalta hai ki log aapke language ka kaise waat laga rahe hote hain. I could only smile and say I am glad I am out of it.