Friday, February 20, 2009

Comings and groins



Noam Chomsky teaches universal grammar when he isn’t hitting the White House with a sledgehammer. Very few people understand him. He says babies are born with grammar in their brains. I think they are born with the grammar of the groins. We struggle with grammar because grammarians are frigid and testy. They need spectacles to find their testicles. People will embrace grammar and take it to bed if they get language lubricants.

Glance at the old-fashioned Parts of Speech. A most interesting noun is ‘intercourse’, but no grammar book uses it as an example. ‘Intercourse’ is more exciting as a proper noun: it is the name of a town in Pennsylvania. The Amish Christians there do not drive cars or allow any form of birth control, including withdrawal. They do it good and proper.

‘Groin’, another noun, is worth caressing if you are female. It means testicles, as well. Groins you see on the beach are bigger—these are walls built into the sea to break the waves. Carousal has little to do with arousal. It is revelry. You see carousel at the airport—it’s the belt that goes round with other people’s luggage.

Verbs never cease to arouse interest: these are action words, like ‘fornicate’. To fornicate is to have sex that is not adulterous. In the Bible, adultery is a sin you commit; there is no commandment against fornication. You don’t commit it—it is no crime; you just do it with delight. Do not mix it with formication, which is a neurological feeling of insects crawling all over the body: just ensure the partner is not a creep. Architects can fornicate at work: the adjective ‘fornicate’ means ‘shaped like an arch’. The word comes from Latin fornix, an arch under which harlots stood tempting the horny. When you arch your back, you have a hunch or a hump.

The verb ‘ejaculate’ involves an exclamation. Most men ejaculate in private. It wasn’t so in the past. In novels like Wuthering Heights and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, characters often ejaculated in public, with their astonished mouths. Female ejaculation is a hot area of research, though most people have encountered it only in fiction. Here is an example of synchronized ejaculation from the novel Being Himself by Horatio Alger, who died in 1899: “She went to the door… and, on opening it, started in surprise to see Willis Ford. ‘Mr Ford!’ she ejaculated. [Two lines later Ford joins her.] ‘Run away,’ ejaculated Ford, in dismay.”

Pronouns, though very few, are handy tools. The possessive pronoun ‘yours’ in ‘up yours’ is most expressive when accompanied by an upright middle finger. ‘Adjective’ has a bit of ‘eject’ stuck to it. It can be noisome if you don’t clean it. ‘Noisome’ means disgusting, not noisy. The word ‘fast’ is an adverb, which children scream in cars and women scream in bed. Strangle them if they say ‘fastly’. Indians are never sure of their prepositions despite the graphic 64 positions in Kamasutra: should it be in the chair or on the chair, they wonder. Plump for ‘in’ if the chair has arms.

Of all prepositions, I like cum, which also works as a conjunction. Actor-cum-politician is vogue. Cum is now better known as a variant of come. Conjunction means sexual union. After conjunction, comes the climax: it is interjection. The most satisfying interjections are ooh, aah and ummm.

Three women married the poet e.e. cummings for his name, no doubt: he was copious. He wrote in small letters, embracing quirky brackets, which I have removed from these lines: “may i feel said he/ i’ll squeal said she/ just once said he/ it’s fun said she…./ tiptop said he/ don’t stop said she/ oh no said he/ go slow said she/ cccome? said he/ ummm said she….”

Cummings was juicy. Chomsky is dry. A researcher tried teaching English to a chimpanzee called Nim Chimpsky. The primate met its maker before it could well mate. Thank God I heard of Chomsky long after I got laid.

*This article appeared in the Indian newsmagazine The Week (www.the-week.com) in February 2009.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

The bear goes to the White House

Tall and handsome, Obama is orally awesome. He would take the world, not with the missile launcher but with the teleprompter. He holds us spellbound, but his forebears really confound. Obama mixes ‘forebears’ with ‘forbearers’ and mashes them in his mouth. Replay his inaugural address, and you still won’t know whether he uttered the first word or the second. He slurred the last syllable, leaving the word indistinct.

He meant forebears, no doubt, but forbearers barged unchallenged into many newspapers. Editors offered no resistance, even at The New York Times and The Washington Post. The campaign web site barackobama.com posted the text as prepared for delivery. It had forbearers. The White House went by forebears a full day late.

Forbearers are people who forbear; they show restraint. Forebears are ancestors. If my forebears had shown some physical restraint I wouldn’t be around. If these F words were interchangeable, ‘forgerers’ would pass off as forgers. And 'fatherers' would stomp around as fathers. Sniff at the roots: forbearer comes from Old English ‘forberan’, meaning to endure. Forebear evolved from ‘fore be-er’, one who existed before.

Everyone is familiar with the prefix fore. It occurs in foreskin and foreplay, which women complain doesn’t occur often enough. After-play never occurs at all: forspent, the male flops over and conks out. To forego is to go or come before, to forgo is to do without. One may forgo sex and be a celibate, but desire doesn’t abate even if one deigns to ‘urbate’ the mast.

Obama had mauled forebears twice in the past: first in his Audacity of Hope address in 2004, and then in his Call to Renewal address in 2006. He uttered forbearers — distinctly. There is no slurring in the videos. Fault not his speechwriter Jon Favreau: he joined Obama after 2004. Favreau is a dab hand, which was last seen fondling the right breast of a Hillary Clinton cutout. Fowler, the usage martinet, would howl fouler if he saw this slip in the presidential address: “…there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.”

Bear descended from the word ‘beron’, meaning one that is brown—he now occupies 10 Downing Street. Blair has retired to his lair. Obama distrusts the Kremlin. The Russian word for bear is ‘medved’, honey-eater: ‘medu’ means honey, and ‘ed’ to eat. Medvedev, the president, is son of a bear. ‘Medu’ tastes the same in Sanskrit ‘madhu’. Ed is short for editor and erectile dysfunction, which these days are one and the same. A cure for the condition lies with Ursula Andress, whose first name means little bear, Ursa Minor. People saw stars when they saw her. Andress was more exciting than any presidential address. She played Honey Ryder in the film Dr. No in a bikini and won a Golden Globe. Unlike poles, like globes attract.


The I&B ministry repels. It released an ad in the papers on January 26: “Indian Republic Turns 60.” You turn 60 when you complete 60 years. The republic has a year more to go for that. No Hindu rate of growth for the misinformation ministry. It craves the rabbit rate.

Obama said his father might not have been served in a restaurant 60 years ago. Bearers in India would have welcomed him. Bearers work only in Indian restaurants. Others employ waiters. I am not cribbing. To crib is to copy at an exam or plagiarise somebody’s work. A baby sleeps in a crib, a cow eats from a crib, a prostitute may work in a seedy room called crib. Cribbing about others is an Indian thing. Others carp, crab, gripe, grouse or grumble. Our cribbing doesn’t exist in many English dictionaries.

India can offer the 44th American president new turns of phrases. Our cricket fans, who float ‘sixers’, would dub him Forty-Fourer. So help him God.

*This article appeared in the Indian news magazine The Week (www.the-week.com) in February 2009.

A feminine ending

In Tamil Nadu, people tend to pronounce 'zha' as 'la'. So God help me if M.K. Stalin's brother M.K. Azhagiri is a cousin of Dante Alighieri. I enjoy reading Dante, but comedy is more divine when I sight confidante. The press revels in describing a politician as a confidante of a more important politician. There is no problem if Ambika Soni is Sonia Gandhi's confidante. But Ahmed Patel will require sub-navel surgery to qualify as a confidante. He is her confidant, of course, without the feminine 'e'.

The feminine 'e' clings, as if estrous, to some words to make a gender conquest. Denis surrenders his masculinity at the ecstatic touch of 'e' and becomes the feminine Denise. Louis does likewise to become Louise. Most such words are borrowed from French, but you don't need to know French to tell a fiancée from her fiancé: the former looks curvy and spacey. When they get married and get divorced, she becomes a divorcée and he a divorcé, if they follow the French to the letter. But divorcee is common gender as well; it could be a male or a female.

So is protégé. You may mentor a protégée and chaperon her to a ball for her debut. She is a debutante, while a first-time performer is a debutant. Calling a new actress a debutante is no big crime, but calling a new male actor so would be questioning his cojones. Daniel Craig, the only fair-haired Bond, can never be a blonde; he is just blond. All other Bonds were brunet, not brunette.

Never say 'ne' again with doyen, if you mean the male. Doyenne is the female of that exalted species. More picky is the comedienne. Note how she twists the comedian's tail, plucking out his only 'a' and plunging in an emasculating 'enne'. Equestrienne also does it, to hapless equestrian, the male astride the mount. So I would rather horse around with the Greek bacchante, the femme fatale of the orgiastic bacchant who worships the drunken god Bacchus.

Most men prefer masseuse to masseur, hoping she will use more than her hands and feet. I sympathise with danseuse; she has long suffered abuse. She is a ballerina, and not just any female dancer. Danseur, the male, has largely kept to France, perhaps for fear of genital mutilation.

Those who misuse feminine endings deserve to be marched behind the drum majorette and thrown to the lioness or to the whip-cracking dominatrix. Or be simply neutered.


Condoleezza Rice — with a double 'e' and a double 'z' to boot — goes down as The Confidante, which is the title of her political biography by Pulitzer winner Glenn Kessler. Condi could be jaunty when dealing with Rawalpindi. She made a call to Pakistan on Dec. 28, and General Kayani cooed that there would be no war with India. As if he were the president, not Asif Zardari.

Give Zardari his due—his Ten Per Cent—for giving the phrase ‘non-state actors’ wide currency. This is not a new coinage. Even Manmohan Singh invoked it long before Zardari was implanted in Islamabad.

Singh spoke of non-state actors on five occasions in 2008, first in Beijing in January and last in New Delhi in November, three days before terrorists attacked Mumbai.

Much of the CIA document Global Trends 2015, released in 2001, is about non-state actors. Here is one of its oracles: "Continued turmoil in Afghanistan and Pakistan will spill over to Kashmir and other areas of the subcontinent, prompting Indian leaders to take more aggressive preemptive and retaliatory actions." Americans sound prophetic because they state their intentions.

Non-state actors are hardly a travelling troupe. They are a motley group of NGOs, MNCs and religious sects as well as gangsters and terrorists — any transnational who can reduce or undermine the role of the state.

Lumping them together, the phrase dumbs down terror. It gives the terrorist a facial, and beautifies his balaclava. If terrorists were non-state actors, Al Qaeda would be Al Pacino.

*This article appeared in the Indian news magazine The Week (www.the-week.com) in January 2009.