My husband sent me a mysterious text message the other day - ‘Prabha served a Great Britain for lunch.’ I was out of station and he had been invited to lunch at my friend Prabha’s place. But what was she doing, serving Great Britain? I thought we Indians had done with serving the British since August 15 1947. Had an Englishman been invited for lunch too, and like a good Indian she had served the foreign guest first? And in her enthusiasm to serve him, had she forgotten to serve my husband? No that couldn’t have happened, I reassured myself. Prabha was too perfect a hostess to overlook any of her guests. Or had she served a proper English lunch? She was a great cook and might have gone continental.
I couldn’t get this cryptic message out of my mind and sent a text, ‘What do you mean?’ I got a reply, ‘What do you mean, “what do you mean”?’ This was getting us nowhere, not to Great Britain, anyway. So I decided to give him a call to solve the mystery. He was at a meeting and answered in a hoarse whisper, ‘I meant she served a great biriyani. Don’t call again; the meeting’s started.’
Ah, so the culprit was the super intelligent autocorrect that knows what’s best for everybody and had decided to change the menu to ‘Great Britain.’ I should have guessed. Don’t autocorrect and its older companion spell check delight in making fools of us all?
I remember the joy with which spell check was greeted when it made its confident appearance in our virtual lives. The bumbling spellers were elated and welcomed the programme with fumbling, over-eager fingers. No longer need they misspell ‘misspell’ or be embarrassed about getting ‘embarrassed’ wrong. Tricky words could be used fearlessly now; just leave it to Daddy Spell Check.
The idea of crafting a nonsensical sentence like, ‘The occurrence of “sacrilegious” in writing was no longer a weird occasion for desperation; instead, the fascinating appellation made you more accommodating and ecstatic,’ packed with words that would find a place in Spelling Bee contests, was not daunting any more.
Competent spellers who cringed when accidental errors crept into their writing were happy too, relieved that with spell check’s help, such slips would get corrected automatically and their work would be pristine pure and mistake-free.
Alas! Little did they guess that spell check worked in unfathomable ways its blunders to perform. As it merrily went about its business, the mechanical, often senseless revision brought with it hilarity, embarrassment and chaos. When a friend tried to use his cousin’s name ‘Mrinal’ in a mail, spell check claimed to know better and insisted it had better be ‘urinal.’ An ‘erratic schedule’ was excitingly altered to an ‘erotic schedule’ and a happy marriage ran into rough weather when a woman’s birthday wishes for her ‘dear’ husband became ghoulish wishes for her ‘dead’ husband. And of course there were any number of risqué recommendations as substitutes for harmless words and Indian names that the American app struggled to comprehend.
Then came the smart phone with its autocorrect working overtime. The spell check in the computer at least gave the user the option of mulling over the change and overturning its tongue- in-cheek suggestions, but the smart phone with its touch screen mechanism didn’t allow any leeway. It was touch and go here – just a light, even accidental touch and the message was gone. A dance recital became rectal, a congratulatory message on someone’s happy running of a business changed ominously to happy ruining of a business and parents who were expecting to be asked to take their children for auditioning were appalled to find a message ordering them to be brought for auctioning.
‘We’re coming to ignite you for our daughter’s marriage,’ ran a friend’s message and we were taken aback. What had we done to this nice friend to have kindled in her a desire for our public immolation? But of course it was only autocorrect’s incendiary substitution for ‘invite’.
I sent a message to my husband, ‘the stupid autocorrect changed “a great biriyani” to “Great Britain”. How’s the meeting?’ I got this text as response from his smart phone: ‘Gored to death here. Dreaming of Great Britain.’
khyrubutter@yahoo.com
(A fortnightly column by the city-based writer, academic and author of the Butterfingers series)
