As a member of a family which was quite often on the move from one part of the country to the other, my childhood is studded, peppered and maybe embellished with a few gems in terms of experiences. And the ones that occupy the foremost regions of the association areas of my cerebral hemispheres are the ones that I have had in terms of the most amusing situations around the rampant usage of swear words. They say that the first word that a baby comes out when she breaks into speech is 'ma' or 'mama' or 'amma'. So pure , so natural , so unadulterated ! And on the opposite end of the spectrum, it is also true that the first few words that one gets attracted to, in a foreign language is the string of cuss words so endemic to that language ! Pure ?? Natural ?? Unadulterated ??
The first incident took place when I returned to Delhi, at the age of nine after spending a year in the South for a year, thanks to my father's recuperation schedule, post an attack of pleuracy. Needless to say, I wasn't treated to an array of oil lamps a' la Deepavali, as I couldn't lay claim to any link with the Ikshvaku clan of Lord Rama ! I knew I was a mere mortal ! But I was welcomed with open arms into the clan of local brats. During one of the scuffles between the ruffians of that clan, one scrubby member screamed at a fleeing brigand loudly with a hyperbolic screwing up of the face, 'maadar chhod' 'behen chhod'. I was suitably shocked more at the drama behind the situation than at the impact of the ' sublime' words. Later on, pondering over the incident, I was suitably impressed. Suitably impressed due to my amazement at the evolution of THE Indian cuss word. I was elated to 'realize' that we had evolved to such an extent that even our cuss words were notches above mundane standards of crudity . 'Abandoning' or 'chhod'ing one's sister or mother unprotected in an irresponsible fashion was a swear word of the worst degree ! I had obviously misheard the phonetically softer 'd' as the harsher version !Of course, it wouldn't have made any difference, as I really didn't know what the 'profound' word actually meant !
Another instance that comes to my mind is the one which I had with my five-year old nephew when I landed on the turf of Mumbai, all of 21 in 1985. With the state of my knowledge of the State language being nothing short of something that would demand a shameful exile under the biggest boulder, I was shell-shocked when the little moppet screamed 'gandool' one fine day . I missed the terminal 'l' and concluded that the precocious one was 'ably' using the word ,which actually meant someone who tags a commercial value for the usage of the terminal orifice of his egestive wastes' for carnal pleasure !
I, like a true zealot, reported the matter to his morally upright mother . And she, in all alacrity, gave him a royal pasting. The quizzed lad indignantly claimed that he had merely exclaimed at having seen a thick fat 'gandool' crawling up the wall. His loving mother gave a dramatic twist to her efficient neck-joint and shot a smouldering look , which when I later understood, meant : 'Gandool' is the Marathi equivalent of ant, you virtual image of the fossilized remnant of a feather-brained nincompoop !
And there was my aunt's mother , who had a great fetish for replacing her h's with p's. To add to this 'charm' she was heavily challenged as far as the national language, Hindi's vocabulary went.
On one of those rare occasions where she ended up 'serendipitously' dealing with the family's washerman ( my aunt would religiously prevent her interception with the washerman, milkman, green grocer and their ilk, fearing thoroughly embarrassing situations ! ), she demanded that he needed to do the entire month's 'hishaab' ( accounts ) immediately . Then and there, right in her presence ! The assiduous lady added that she wanted to see how he did the 'hishaab'. Considering the fact that the sweet lady always mixed up her h's and p's and the modified word meant the holy act or urination, the harrowed man was pertrified at the 'promiscuity' of the octagenarian !
And how could I forget the embarrassingly hilarious situations which would crop up in Delhi, when the milkman would ask my neighbour to unlatch her 'kundi' (latch of her door ) to facilitate delivery of the milk packets, or in Mumbai, where the local gardener would suggest that my aunt grow 'the yellow roses in her larger 'kundis' ( flower pots ). Before you start questioning the bawdy humour behind this, let me tell you that the sweetly dramatic sounding word , in our mother-tongue meant one's derrie're !
My ardent obeisances to the holy souls who coined these sublime words and spiced up my otherwise drab memories !
No comments:
Post a Comment