Trimming Them Down

                

              Trimming them down

          

     I squinted at the letters ‘tq’, accompanied by a few emojis grinning crazily at me, on my mobile screen. I sighed. I know I should have gotten used to those tiny words but I somehow I couldn’t.

I pulled the sheet closer to my neck. It was a cold, windy, December night. The WeatherBug showed a temperature of 21 degree Celsius a few minutes ago. I yawned. It is so difficult to stay awake when the weather is perfect and your bed is so cozy and yes, when your friend types a teensy, weensy ‘tq’ to the great help you had offered.

 I certainly don’t believe that one must use the word ‘Thank you’ to express their gratitude. Nevertheless, it is the magic word. However, it certainly loses its magic when it is cut down to ‘tq’. Most of the words lose their magic when you trim them down to your convenience.

 I turned to my mobile, getting ready to type. After a moment’s thought, I typed back, ‘You’re welcome’, sending the same emojis along. Somehow, ‘You’re welcome’ seemed more superior to the tiny ‘tq’. ‘ You didn’t create these words and so, you have no right to shorten them’, I told myself.

 Of course, I had been one of them, taking pride in cutting words the shortest and being the fastest one to reply, until…

My mobile slipped from my hand, it fell right on my face. I made a face at it and rolled over. That somehow churned the memories in my head. As though the churning disturbed them from their deep slumber, a swarm of my childhood memories came buzzing towards me, and a particular one almost stung me…

It was around the time when I created my first blog. I had been super-excited about it and did a lot of promotion for it in the social networking sites, and that made my friends lose interest almost immediately. But that didn’t stop me from pestering my brother to check out all the blog promotion I did. He wouldn’t budge for he cared  more for blog posts rather than blog promotion. One day, when I literally dragged him to the system, he finally gave in.

When he began reading it, I smiled gleefully like an emoji. However, after a few seconds, my features mimicked the expression on my brother’s face, and the smile quickly disappeared. At that moment, if my Mom or Dad had peeped into my room, they would have bet I was actually imitating my brother.

I gave a quick glance to the promotion work to check if nothing seemed absurd or out of place. 

As if he had read my mind, he read, “Please read…” from the screen  in an accusing tone.

 “Well, I was trying to be polite…” I told, feeling slightly stupid.

“It’s spelling!” he said pointing to the screen and gave me a look that a headmaster would give to a filthy brat who was going to be suspended.

I stared at the word, as if to scrutinize it. The word Pls stared back at me, inoffensively.

 I blinked. Using 'Pls' instead of 'Please' seemed so right, so natural. I wondered if any explanation was required at all.  On the contrary, his expression demanded a lot of explanation.

“Ev- everyone does that”, I told smugly, with the What’s-the-big-deal look written all over my face.

“That’s doesn’t make it any authentic”, he snapped at me.

I considered this for a moment. I felt a tiny drop of Guilt, whch almost immediately got diluted in a wide sea of arrogance. After all, feeling remorseful doesn’t help in winning the argument with your sibling.  You had to keep back-answering or else you would lose miserably.

“Don’t you-“, I begin and then bit my tongue.  ‘How stupid! Of course, he won’t advice me against using such words unless he’s not using them himself’, I thought.

But the words that had slipped cannot be taken back, and now I wondered if I have to brace myself for a mini-tirade.

However, his voice was unusually calm when he spoke, “No, I have not cut down the words ever since I fell in love with the language.”

‘Oh, wow! So, English had been his first love,’ I thought and instantly felt a nasty grin spread across my face.

“After all, it helps me in learning a lot of stuff, in communicating with people around me, and most importantly, in expressing myself.

These words echoed in my mind and I mercilessly killed that nasty grin.   

But I wasn’t ready to give up yet. I decided to come up with a sensible retort this time.

“We can’t afford to waste time, typing the entire words”, I told him.

Suddenly, he looked a bit furious, but he continued to speak in that calm, serene tone.

“The neologists had spent years breaking their heads to create the words and you think you would actually waste your time typing the entire word?”

I fell silent.  It never really occurred to me that they were people who spent most part of their lives forming English words. Because, only text books, story books and newspapers had introduced me to the world of words and of course, my buddies had forcefully (not really forcefully all the time) dragged into the world of cuss words.

Now, the will to quarrel had gone, for he was perfectly right. Now I saw Guilt speeding towards me in huge, monstrous waves, it washed over me, making me feel wet and vulnerable.

I slowly sat down beside my brother, with my face slightly bent down and decided to be honest.

“Well, I actually wanted to be one among them, wanted to show them I follow the trends (he rolled his eyes at this) th-that’s why I actually cut the words shorter and use abbreviations... I wanted to feel included, you know…” I told, with my eyes on the floor.  

“Did you really think that cutting down the words would actually make you one of them?  Why do you want to become one among them, anyways? You can stay unique, unique in your own way.”

 ‘Unique in my own way!’ I raised my head and looked right into his cold, piercing eyes.

“Aristotle believed that earth was round. The whole world laughed at him and you know what, he laughed at them, well, not really… but he went on to prove that his concept was absolutely right…”

I began to wonder if he was starting to exaggerate things and drifting away from the actual conversation.

“…And you might actually wonder why I’m relating such trivial things like using crazy abbreviations  to such a significant concept.

I raised my eyebrows. It’s funny how he reads my thoughts so well, every time. It actually gets creepy over a period of time.

“…But nothing is as trivial as it seems. Like, for instance, Rosa Parks could have simply given away her seat to the white person, however, she refused to do so for which she was arrested; she stood up for her ideals. Her act of defiance paved the way for the Civil Rights Movement.”

 Then after a small pause he began to speak in a voice that seemed so distant, so strange, 

“So, stand up for your beliefs and ideals, even if the whole world is against you, because they never let you down. And even if they happen to fail you, at some point of time, fight on and in the end, you would realize how right you had been”

“Even if everybody in the world types r for are and u for you, you type the complete words, simply because you believe it’s the right thing to do.”

“I think it’s the little you can do to respect the language that has helped you express yourself for the major part of your life and to honour the people who had dedicated themselves for the innovation of English language”, he concluded,  looking slightly breathless.  

An eerie silence developed in the room. The Guilt, now, flowed through my body, making me realize how silly I had been. After what seemed like hours, I decided to break the silence.

“Hey, bro, don’t you dare disturb me for the next ten minutes or so. I have a bit of editing work to do.”

He grinned at me broadly (A rarity!). And I grinned back...

The unique, distinct notification sound from my mobile instantly brought me back to my tiny, dirty room.

The mobile screen showed the message ‘GN’

I smiled at the two, tiny letters and typed ‘Good Night' and, yes I did sent a few emojis along.