I swear!
YEAH, LIKE a million times a day! Why, maybe at the drop of a hat, bat of an eyelash even! All because, somewhere up the line, `swear-words' crept in from the sidelines into mainstream vocabulary. And I didn't give a hoot about it... until one fine day... .
That fine day.
I almost met the maker, when a certain somebody raised his left eyebrow an eighth of an inch, at my choice of words. After a few hours of assisted hyperventilation, I recovered the mobility of my tongue sufficiently to ask the certain somebody (in case you are already on your eighth life, it was my Boss) why I was chosen to undergo the cyber-age version of the `ancient-eyebrow-torture'. He told me quite simply that my vocabulary vied with the Cooum (Chennai's open-to-sky-sewer) for its celebrated pong and unless I refined my vocabulary and expunged it of all those (in) famous words, I would do well to become immune to raised eyebrows. Now, had he raised cain, I would've shrugged it off. But I was thoroughly browbeaten by the raised-left-eyebrow - for didn't it epitomise disdain and disapproval? Ergo, I hardly had an alternative and had to quickly execute an Elizabeth Doolittle act, a la My Fair Lady - Covent Garden speak to polished Queens' parlance!
Post-mortem-analysis - what on earth loosened the tongue in the first place?
I could simply pass the buck on, for after all there is that eternal scapegoat- the `idiot-box', assured damnation (sorry, but most suitable here) if only it were a soul. And then, Big Bro, who is always watching, and his influence across the globe. Don't forget the comic strips and cartoons, films and books, which somehow seem to have veered away from kid-friendly vocabulary. Of course, there is peer pressure - at an age when to be `with-it' is the rider, and everybody who's a somebody is peppering their passionate outbursts with grade 1 swear words, can one afford to stick out like a sore thumb? So, the four-letter words gleefully learnt at teenage or thereafter, are tucked away in those little grey cells, and somehow never seem to get affected by memory loss. But, from the clandestine usage a decade or so ago, to the full-blown verbal-diarrhoea that passes off as speech today, things have taken a definitive turn for the worse. True blue English-lovers claim that the habit of using a certain popular four-letter word as an adjective has restricted the use of other more suitable incisive words to describe nouns. They also lament that expletives used as `informal intensifiers', and the `choice' vocabulary, culled from exotic nomenclatures for various parts of the human anatomy and its biological and scatological functions are the root cause for the death of vintage English as they knew it!
So, what the heck does one do?
Well, for starters I tried to prune my vocabulary of words that were sure-fire stinkers, and then went on to censor all my favourite words that had stood the test of time, in releasing the pent up emotions in a go. Initially, I was honestly tongue-tied and felt that my style was getting stymied. I mean, what does one yell in the general direction of the sky when it starts raining, and one doesn't have an umbrella or a raincoat? Sing a song off-key? Recite a cute poem? See the trouble? But, I discovered that English had more depth than I gave it credit for. If one actually looks hard, there are so very many polite expressions for not-so-polite situations! And they are quite effective. Not quite flowery, does not pack as much punch maybe, but certainly easier on the ear of the addressees.
So, where's the little cache of words you may ask. Well, I will certainly divulge them, but umm... you must promise not to laugh. (See, I did not say `swear'!)
Golly, Gosh, Boomps a daisy, Goodness Gracious, Naughty... . stop laughing you...
I know it will be tough... but trust me; it will certainly be worth it!
APARNA KARTIKEYAN
faqs@cnkonline.com
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