Devil take the printer

Captain Bertie Clay developed a soft-nosed bullet at Dum Dum arsenal in Calcutta in the 1890s. Such bullets expanded on impact, and inflicted ghastly wounds. These came to be called dumdum bullets. The Hague convention of 1899 banned their use in “civilised warfare”. But the word dumdum means dumb-dumb.

Gordon Brown looks dumdum. He sent a handwritten condolence letter to a dead soldier’s mother, but got the surname wrong. “Dear Mrs James,” he began the letter to Mrs Janes, whose son Jamie Janes died young fighting somebody else’s uncivilised war in Afghanistan. The mother called it “a hastily scrawled insult”. Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan’s father felt the same way when he saw his son’s name misspelt as Unnikrishan at a war memorial.

Most Indians don’t mind misspellings. The old Dum Dum airport now preens as Subhash Chandra Bose airport. The final ‘h’ in Subhash is an insult to Subhas Bose. But the Fuhrer admired his surname, no doubt. Bose in German means evil. Bose onkel (evil uncles) is a German euphemism for child molesters.

Morarji Desai declared Jayaprakash Narayan dead seven months early, in 1979. India commemorates JP by mangling his name. JP is Jai Prakash for the government-run Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital in Delhi. Its website swears by Jai Prakash. The Lok Nayak hospital in Patna is called Jai Prabha Hospital. It tries to mate JP with his wife, Prabhavati, who was a lifelong celibate.

Gandhi was Ghandy to many Englishmen. Feroze Gandy styled himself as Feroze Gandhi for political gain. Congress baiters would love to link him with Kobad Ghandy. Of all freedom fighters, Abul Kalam Azad’s name is the most abused. Even textbooks called him Abdul. Journalists were enamoured of A.B. Vajpayee. They spelt his middle name as Behari. It sounded grand and expansive like the man, unlike the actual name, the earthy Bihari.

To err is human; to forgive you need the wine. Ruth in the Bible lay with the merry Boaz to give him warmth at night, after he had eaten and drunk. Pleased, he gave her six measures of barley, and “then she went into the city”. In many copies of the King James Bible of 1611 “she went into the city” was misprinted as “he went into the city.”

The King James Bible of 1631 is called the Wicked Bible. Its printers forgot to put the word ‘not’ in one of the Ten Commandments. “Thou shalt commit adultery,” it urged the faithful. The first Bible printed in Ireland, in 1716, offered similar advice. It encouraged the flock to “sin on more” instead of finger-wagging them to “sin no more”.

A printing error made Queen Victoria’s maiden visit to Ireland memorable. She enchanted the people while passing a bridge. A newspaper reported the spectacle: “The crowd broke into tumultuous applause as the Queen pissed over the bridge.” It was an Irish rebel in the newsroom who made the queen gush. He lost his job for the gumption.

Gum became an orgasmic discharge in The Wall Street Journal in 2004 when Singapore lifted the famous ban on chewing gum sale. The paper clarified: “It was never illegal to bring come into the country for personal use.”

The Hindu recorded inadequacies at the Madras General Hospital in 1995: “Another coin-box telephone near the trauma ward is defunct and yet another fucked away near the male medical ward.” The paper meant ‘tucked away’. But if gum can be come, coin-box phones can be amorously active. If in doubt, note their slit, and the penny drops.

Robert Browning would tip his hat to them. He used the word twat in the poem Pippa Passes without knowing its meaning: “Then owls and bats/ Cowls and twats/ Monks and nuns/ In a cloister’s mood/ Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry.” He thought twat meant hat. Both must have welcomed his head.
wickedword09@gmail.com
*This article appeared in the Indian news magazine The Week (www.the-week.com) in November 2009.