OK, Amrit … here we go:
I am married to an Indian, and thus I have an Indian family back in India.
Although I have never lived in India, I have visited, and over the years I have noticed certain linguistic features that Indians use when speaking (or writing) in English.
At this point, I must emphasize that I am not criticizing them, nor am I criticizing your writing Amrit. It’s just that I am so tuned in to recognize these small linguistic variations that as soon as I hear them I just know that the speaker (or the writer — such as yourself) is Indian.
So what were the tiny variations that I noticed in your writing?
There weren’t many (probably four or so in your ‘money-saving psychology’ article) and they all involved the omission of either ‘the’ or ‘a’ before a descriptive word. Here’s a couple of examples:
1: ‘weekends were *** only time …’
2: ‘we made * few bad decisions’
So, I spotted your Indianness Amrit!
Be proud of it — and don’t change for the sake of change.
Remember … I’m not criticizing you.
Glad to be your friend.
Fred