Yesterday I posted about an excellent book, Katherine Boo’s Behind The Beautiful Forevers. I found two new English words there, I think specifically Indian innovations. One was ‘overcity’ – the Mumbai where the rich and powerful live, in contrast to the slum where the book is set. The other ‘by-hearting’, the learning by rote of school work.

It reminded me of another magnificent word, ‘pre-poning’. This is the opposite of postpone. Instead of putting something off until later, you bring it forward. It was used by the Indian telecoms regulator in announcing that the deadline for submitting bids for a spectrum auction was going to be far earlier than most potential bidders had previously thought.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum

Time to go and pre-pone my lunch….