I took some meat loaf and mashed potatoes even though I wasn’t hungry. […] I’m regretting it now as I ride my mountain bike, vurping onions and garlic and hard-boiled egg.

The object of the onlook is taken to be more than physical, more than just sense-experience, therefore it is meta-physical.

He leaned an elbow on her table, and covered his eyes with his hand. […] He unshaded his face after a little while, and spoke steadily.

From the prevailing colonial perspective, the English of the babus was error-ridden and characterised by over-elaborate ornateness, and for these ‘transgressions’ it became the butt of native-speaker ridicule.