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.
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