I remember Miss Mistry’s sharp nails scratching me as she rapped my knuckles with a ruler.

“F sharp!” she would tell me, her voice a semi-tone higher, as she explained ” the scale of G major has the F note raised a semi tone higher!!!”

I never really understood why learning a different skill required a different language and have always been baffled by “secret codes” like bidding in Bridge, culinary terms in cooking, tongue-twisting names in Yoga  and important sounding words in managerial jargon.But then, I suppose that would de-mystify everything and make everything really easy! So I learnt that two horizontal parallel lines crossed with two vertical parallel lines is called a SHARP and would feel very important and smug that I could identify and name this sign.  And this is what I thought the sign was called for the longest time till  someone came and called it a HASHTAG.

That really sent me on another spin.

So what’s with the hashtag?

Well, you use it so that it can be picked up by search engines explained Zo, one day while going down in the lift. (He,of course is a whole generation younger than I am and doesn’t know that a hashtag is what I learnt was a Sharp.)

What?

Do you mean to say that there are machines that are tracking your every word and actually making a kind of reference grid, pairing the matching words?

Yes, explained the young boy who was trying to get me to understand what Twitter was all about. So, I asked him, do I have to tweet  #wanted a #tutor to explain #twitter? if I wanted to find someone to explain what it was?

Before his withering look could silence me forever,  we reached the ground floor and he made a quick exit!