Kishore Singh: Just cool it

PEOPLE LIKE US

As a child she lisped a little, so my wife and I paid more than the usual attention to ensure our daughter enunciated words clearly and cogently. And to help her improve her language skills, I'd sit with her while she did her home work, helping her place adjectives, encouraging the use of synonyms, and practising the cadences of reading aloud to avoid the sing-song delivery that marks most public school students' oratory.

For some years the effort paid off, and though she never mastered her math, she'd come back beaming after her language classes. Like her mother, she was given to babbling at great length which was endearing when she prattled on as a child, but became irksome as she moved into her teen years. "Don't you think she speaks too much, too fast?" I'd ask my wife. "That's because she has brains," my wife would respond, "unlike...". "Just because my family remains silent doesn't mean they can't think," I'd protest. "Of course," my wife would smile sarcastically, "silence is the first resort of the truly intelligent!"

I'm not sure when my daughter stopped speaking, kind of, but it must have been about a year ago. She'd respond, of course, but in mono-syllables. How was school? "Fine." Did anything special happen today? "No." How did she do at the exam? "Okay." Had she got her glasses fixed? "Yes."

It couldn't be an elocution problem since I still made her read aloud. But the more loquacious her school teacher became, the more succinct my daughter grew. She went for tuition classes as usual, so there was absolutely nothing in her education that should have reduced her into a verbal monk.

Worse was to come. From a variety of words, she went on to speaking just one. Would she like to come see a movie with us? "Cool," she'd say resignedly. How was she, her granny would call to ask. "Cool," she'd respond indifferently. With friends, her vocabulary would become suddenly expressive. "Cool!" she'd exclaim, "cool, yaar," interjected with a verbose "Really cool!"

If I rang home to say I'd be home late and wouldn't be able to take her out shopping, she'd whisper a dejected "cool". Could I order her a pizza instead? "Cool," she'd cheer up. How was the birthday party at her friend's? "Er, cool." Could I pick up a CD on my way home from work? "Cool..."

Sometimes I wondered what it was she and her friends spoke about. When they were together, all they did was giggle. And when they spoke on their mobiles, all they seemed to say to each other was "cool". "What sort of conversation is that?" I asked my wife, "Surely someone must be saying something else besides 'cool'?" "Just be cool," my wife advised.

But I couldn't be cool, and so I became, as my daughter took to calling me, "uncool". Why didn't she wear her new t-shirt, I'd ask her. "It's so uncool," she'd answer back, provoked into using three words instead of the mandatory one. In fact, "uncool" required other words for support, so I took to annoying her so she could practise something else besides "cool", even if it was to shout, "You're so uncool."

Uncool I might have been, but I was also clever enough to get her to practise her linguistics. Did she want a samosa? "Samosas are uncool," she'd insist. Could I help her with her school project? She'd get it off the net, she said, "The net is so cool". Did she want to attend a show at the fashion week? "The designer's uncool," she mused, "but to see a live fashion show, how cool is that!"

Fourteen words in one sentence. Maybe she'll even start speaking normally again. That's so cool.