What it means
Timepass is anything you're doing mostly to fill the hours, not because it's deep, serious, or going anywhere huge. In Indian English it can be a film, a hangout, random chatting, a lazy plan, even a low-stakes situationship. It doesn't always mean bad. A lot of the time it's just easy fun your brain was in the mood for.
Usage examples
"Yaar that movie was total timepass, no story, no logic, but honestly we all had a decent time watching it"
"My cousin from Bangalore considers the entire weekend in front of the television set of the family home at Indiranagar as pure timepass, three Bollywood films of the latest releases of the multiplex of the Brigade Road, two cricket matches of the Indian Premier League of the regional channel, and not a single message of the office WhatsApp group answered before the Monday morning standup."
"The newest relationship of the cousin from the engineering college of Pune is officially timepass, the courtship has lasted exactly six weeks and a half between the Saturday lunches at the corner restaurant of the Jangli Maharaj Road and the Sunday afternoon at the rooftop café of the Koregaon Park, and neither participant of the arrangement claims any serious expectation for the next semester of the academic year."
"We weren't studying at all, bro, just sitting at the tapri doing pure timepass till the rain chilled out."
"Don't read too much into it, it's just timepass, we're texting and vibing, not planning some shaadi storyline."
Where it comes from
Timepass is a quintessential coinage of Indian English, attested in the speech of the urban middle classes of Bombay and Calcutta from the late nineteenth century during the British Raj. The compound was formed by direct calque of the Hindi expression samay bitana, to pass time, where the two English words were juxtaposed without the prepositions or articles required by standard English grammar. The form has survived the independence of India in nineteen-forty-seven and has spread through Bollywood cinema and the Indian diaspora to become a recognised feature of the global English of the South Asian community, conveying the laid-back attitude of those who do not need to justify every hour of the day with a productive purpose.
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