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.