You can read English. You can write English. Then someone asks you a question in a meeting, and nothing comes out.

This is not a grammar book. There are no rules to memorise, no tenses to revise, no exercises to complete. There are 500 sentences — the exact working lines Indian corporate professionals need in interviews, standups, client calls, escalations and the first ninety days of a new job — with a note under each one telling you precisely when to use it.

You will learn how to buy yourself three seconds without looking unprepared, how to disagree with someone senior and stay liked, how to explain your own work so an interviewer remembers it, and which perfectly good Indian English phrases quietly cost you credibility the moment your listener is in Austin or Amsterdam.

Read one page. Say it out loud. Use it tomorrow.

Written by Shreedevi Hakak, CELTA-certified (Cambridge, via the British Council) and former Trainer, Talent Transformation at Wipro BPO, who spent years preparing frontline teams for Fortune 500 clients across the US, Canada, Malaysia and Indonesia.