Shifting-Hyphens

One of the favorite passtimes in college was to link people together in order to create some excitement amidst academic boredom. Creating a new story and a discussion point to the casual conversations of say, Arun and Amrita, would add spice and keep it alive as a referral point. A Hypen would then summarily complete the picture : Arun-Amrita.
Diplomats, esp the foreign policy types, similarly used the Hyphen to lump issues and countries for easy reference and some excitement. Middle-East, South-East , Franco-German , Indo-Pak slowly entered Oxford as legitimate words. As the worlds most powerful country, US created all the frames of reference. Sitting in India imagine having to call Dubai - Middle East !
The Hypen - a residue of non-chalant US foreign policy now seems to be in danger of falling off the pages of Oxford. At the turn of the century, with the help of some source code, we moved from being the corner store and taxi-driving types to the absolute top of the consulting value chain, and a couple of 9% growth years later, began to challenge the Hyphens place.
We have now brilliantly shifted the hyphens between Indo-Pak to Indo-China in business and politics, Indo-Pak to Indo-Australia in cricket and Indo-Pak to Indo-US in the media business. Then from being categorised into a non-unit called NAM ( basically an excuse for not-voting on any UN resolution on any issue for fear of taking sides) or a non-starter like SAARC( basically an excuse for knowing what the f%$# our neighbours were upto), we forced the creation of a new acronym of hope called BRIC.
Just as years ago, Japan and China broke away from the South-East by creating powerful economies and a created another larger new region called South Asia ( quite funny if you think about it) , India will now decide who it wants to be on the other side of the hyphen.
That's surely a good, great feeling !