A short story in newspeak

I was on an Indian Airline's flight to New Delhi when I first heard the word. A lilting female voice asked all passengers to ensure that they take all their belongings with them when they 'deplane'. Did I hear that correctly? On my return flight to Kuala Lumpur another female voice also made the same request. That's when I realised that I was acquiring a whole new vocabulary. I am quite familiar with unique Indianisms like 'miscreants absconding', or meetings gettting 'preponed', or how one took an aspirin when one's head was 'paining', or how one could put his or her bags into a car's 'dickey'. But I thought 'deplane' was almost stratoscopically brilliant. The economy and precision of the word excited me.

English is finally becoming more precise, and concise, as it should. Why didn't we think of this before? If one could 'deplane', then we could do the opposite: 'enplane', and the other parts of speech like 'deplaning' and 'enplaning' would, logically, follow.

But why stop there. If we apply the same rules to a car we can have 'encar', 'encarred', 'encarring', 'decar', 'decarred', and 'decarring' (note the two 'r's). And when we go to a bank we can 'enbank' or 'debank' money and we could do it in the past and the continuous tense.

Let me illustrate this with a short story:

"Where is the miscreant?" I asked Sergeant Ishak.

"In the toilet, sir."

"You let him go in there alone?" I tried hard not to make it sound like an admonishment but didn't quite succeed.

"He wanted to do number two, sir!" the Sergeant protested, the pitch of his voice rising a notch, like it did every time he whined. "But don't worry sir, I have locked the door." He smiled, obviously pleased with himself.

"Open that door. Now." I suppose I must have raised my voice a little, if not shouted, judging from the way Sergeant Ishak jumped up instantly, fumbled with the big bundle of keys hooked to his belt and finally opened the door with trembling hands.

The window was ajar. The miscreant had absconded.

"Quick. Get to the car. I know where he's headed."

We ran towards my car because we had no time to summon a squad car. "You drive," I said to Sergeant Ishak, tossing him the ignition keys and encarring on the passenger side. Ishak was the better driver.

The traffic was crazy, but he knew his way. He went through this back alley, and that side alley and through all sorts of housing roads, before enhighwaying towards the airport. Ishak got us to the airport in twenty minutes. I wished he had been quicker. But I could not complain.

"You park the car and look for me at the check-in counter," I shouted over my pounding heart, opening the door and decarring in one quick motion. I cannot let that bastard get away. I knew that there was a flight to Mumbai scheduled to leave in half an hour. I had to catch him before he enplaned or there would be all sorts of problems if I ordered the plane not to derunway. I raced through the departure lounge almost colliding into a train of trolleys, ran into an old man with a red beard on his way to his umrah judging from his clothes, and almost squashed a child that got between my legs, all the while looking around for signs of the miscreant. I was breathless and panting when I got to the information counter.

"Can I help you, sir?" Yes, it was true. They have trained them to be polite.

"Flight AI 216 to Mumbai ... which gate are they enplaning?" I gasped and spluttered.

"C24, sir. But the flight left fifteen minutes ago. It was preponed by half an hour.

"What? How can they ...?"

"I can't answer that, sir. The flight has already left."

I was still sitting on the bench, head on my hands, swearing under my breath, when Ishak sauntered up to me unhurriedly half an hour later. It infuriated me endlessly, but I knew he never walked quickly lest his pants got wrinkled.

"What took you so long?"

"Hee, hee ..." he simpered, with that obligatory scratch of the hair on the back of his neck. "Saya pi' minum." He had gone for a drink. Then he put on his serious face. "Did you catch him, sir?"

I was so angry, all I did was mumble.

"Prepone, sir? Did you say prepone? There is a prepone kiosk on the way to the carpark. I saw it on the way in."

I stared at him in disbelief. I was speechless. For a while I didn't know whether to laugh or cry or kill him on the spot. Then I laughed. "Oh, what the hell," I said, "Where is this free phone? Might as well use it to call home. I don't have much credit left in my mobile."

I saw an ATM on the way to the kiosk and I thought I'd debank some money. The office would have embanked all the salary cheques by now. I will tell my wife not to cook anything tonight. I will take the family out for an expensive Italian dinner. The kids will love that. They love pasta. I cannot let that bastard ruin my day.

(Feel free to continue this story below, but remember to use 'newspeak'.)