I am shattered. I thought I was following orthodox Oxford usage for the commas, the semi-colons, and the colons. And my style, I had hoped, obviously to no avail, is studiedly British; it sometimes is steered in a colonial direction in the context of the conversation. These are things to which I am painfully sensitive; it is physically hurtful when people use 'a history', 'a hotel', 'a hospital', rather than an history.
My wife's style is lucid, limpid, like a little mountain brook, clear and fresh and wholly inimitable. My daughter has a powerful style, which I cannot describe except to say that her choices of le mot juste has astonished me for two decades now. Even with the greatest effort, I cannot pretend to that effortlessness. On the other hand, her grammar and punctuation is punk. Most disconcerting.
I am 60 years old, and my daughter is 30. I married at the age of 27, quite normal for Bengalis.
My affiliation with the armed forces came from schoolboy admiration of an uncle, who went on to become India's first aviator admiral. The Alize Squadron, which he joined in inducting, has a squadron badge first painted by my mother. Unfortunately, when from the Sainik School they were sending us up for the SSB exams., they found that I had a slightly less than perfect eye. So, no executive branch; so, no want any substitute. Many years later, I found an opportunity to be of some use, but am unable to speak about the work - all academic in the extreme, software and IT oriented. I wish I could go back to it.
