“Was your father on-line?” I vividly recall my wide-eyed reaction from over a decade ago when I had visited Madras, to this query that was dropped by a well-meaning ‘uncle’ [if you’re an Anglo-Indian, every senior or friend of your parents were addressed as an uncle or an aunty]. It took me a few moments to process the question; the mind jogged through whether he was referring to my father’s (unsuccessful) attempts at sending an email on the home PC. Why was this uncle in another city keen to know if my father was online? And even if he did, why was it important enough to be brought up at a family dinner? Seeing the dumbfounded look on my face, he spared me the blushes. “Was your father working in the Railways? Did he have a job on the ‘line’? [Which he explained referred to the railway track] Was he an engine driver, guard, ticket collector…?”

My father wasn’t ‘on-line’, but that interesting term to refer to a profession was a penny-drop moment for me. I took it upon myself to recount all the words and utterances connected with our unique phraseology. Having spent most of my life in Bombay, interactions within the community were limited due to a smattering of us in the eastern suburbs. But each time we’d visit relatives in Madras (always Madras, never Chennai), the quaint seaside town of Tangasseri, in Kerala, Cal (not Kolkata) or Bangalore, these Anglo-Indianisms would fill the air—be it for a tea time soiree [high tea was a ceremonial thing], a meal, at a party, or after Sunday mass, when we caught up with long-lost cousins and relatives. “My word, you’ve lost colour,” referring to the tanned complexion, or “Child! You have two left feet; you couldn’t even do the Hokey Pokey at Uncle Graham’s birthday party,” a snide comment on one’s lack of dancing skills [a must], formed part of the lexicon.