Pleasures of pollution

Harry Mathews is a literary oddball. People in Laos mistook the American novelist for a CIA agent. Later, in Paris, he pretended to be a spy. He ran a travel agency for imaginary cloak-and-dagger intrigue, and wrote the 'autobiographical' book My Life In CIA. One of his novels is mysteriously titled Tlooth. Another, Singular Pleasures, is a book of hand-jobs. It describes 61 variations of solitary sex.

Solitary sex is known as onanism, even though Onan had no such obsession. He was the second son of Judah in the Old Testament. When God killed his first-born, Judah said to Onan: "Lie with your brother's wife, and fulfil your duty to her as a brother-in-law to produce offspring for your brother." Onan knew his onions: he didn't want his kids to be credited to his brother. He lay with her, but spilled the seed on the ground. God killed the strategic spill-joy.

The Election Commission loves to play God. It has issued ironclad commandments to candidates, and banned the use of loudspeakers at night. The commission dislikes noise pollution. Its order wouldn't have worked in the distant past, when pollution meant emission of seed in ways other than sexual intercourse. Nocturnal emission was a clear case of pollution, but pardonable. Self-pollution was sinful, an act of onanism.

Linguists pleasure themselves in singular ways. They erupt with joy when they sight frequently abused words correctly used. Offspring, progeny and issue serve as singular as well as plural. Offsprings, progenies and issues - meaning descendants - are for the ignorant. Biceps, kudos and summons are singular nouns that look like plural. Aircrafts and equipments often stray into the papers; these words don't exist. Be mighty pleased if your partner compliments you on your equipment.

People confuse criteria and phenomena with the singular criterion and phenomenon. No such problem with penis. The plural is penes in Latin and penises in English: this vital knowledge remains etched in stone. The plural of the female organ resembling it is clitorides in Latin; the English are content adding -es. Cristoforo Colombo discovered America; another Italian, Renaldo Colombo, discovered the hidden tickler 67 years later. He was an anatomy professor in Padua, a city of plural pleasures. The bachelor Petruchio sings in The Taming of the Shrew: "I have come to wive it wealthily in Padua/ If wealthily, then happily in Padua."

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, poet and painter of Italian stock, translated François Villon, a French felon who wrote poetry by day and thieved at night. Villon, who served time for murder, was brilliant. He wrote, "But where are the snows of yesteryear?" Yesteryear is time past; 'yesteryears' is illiteracy. Those who write 'heydays' deserve a life sentence. Heyday was a celebratory shout like hurrah or a cry for attention, 'hey there'. It has nothing do with any day, but means the stage of greatest vigour.

IIT and IIM alumni dance with democracy during poll time. A number of them have entered the elections, hoping to expand freedoms. That is a natural urge: alumni in ancient Rome were foster children born of slaves. Alumnus is the male singular. Mallika Sarabhai, a candidate in Gandhinagar, is an IIM-A alumna. The female plural is alumnae.

Don't for a moment think enemy's plural is enema, though their common intention is invasion. That reminds me of terminus, whose Latin plural is termini. Terminus was the Roman god of boundaries, and termini were stones marking the limits. Romans worshipped the stones during Terminalia, a festival in February. For Persians, Terminus was the god Baga, who, like the early Hindu god Bhaga, was a distributor of good fortune. Bhagwan is related to Bhaga, a Sanskrit word that also means vagina. Baghdad was baga-data, meaning god-given. The world has seen what American terminators have done to the god-given land. And the world waits to see what they will do to the land of Bhagwan.

*This article appeared in the Indian news magazine The Week (http://www.the-week.com/) in April 2009.
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