Party going to seed

Rousseau did not read any erotic book until he was 30. "These books can only be read with one hand," he wrote in Confessions. Yashwant Sinha's Confessions of a Swadeshi Reformer offered no such one-liners. But he attempted one when he quit as BJP vice-president on June 12. "I am getting a sinking feeling that once again there is a conspiracy of silence," he said in the resignation letter.

'Conspiracy of silence' is vintage Victorian. It entered the English language in 1865. John Stuart Mill introduced it in his book on Auguste Comte, the French philosopher. 'Sinking feeling', though as old, is more colourful. It first appeared in ads for an energy drink called Bovril. One ad showed a boy sitting astride a huge bottle of Bovril bobbing in the sea and saying, "Bovril prevents that sinking feeling." Flaccid old men drank more Bovril than boys willingly did.

Jaswant Singh says the BJP is a "party of yesterday". Its leaders are looking sad and droopy after losing the elections. A swig of Bovril can help them perk up. It is a beef extract, but the cow lovers should look at the brighter side: beef is slang for sex. The name Bovril is a mix of bovine and Vril. Vril comes from The Coming Race, a novel by Edward Bulwer Lytton, who is better known for The Last Days of Pompeii. It is an all-conquering magic fluid. Lytton coined the word from Old French viril, meaning virile.

Vir in Latin means man. The Sanskrit vira has the same root. The Old English word for man was 'wer', which has survived in werewolf. The Sanskrit veerya, meaning semen, is related to virile. Semen has a close kinship with seminary. Don't think that sex-starved Christian priests flooded the place with some sticky fluid. Semen means seed, and seminary was a plot -- a nursery -- where people planted seed. It later became a school for training priests. But the next time you attend a seminar, wipe the seat before you sit.

The BJP president issued a gag order after Sinha sent his letter. Bulwer Lytton's son, the viceroy Lord Lytton, imposed the Vernacular Press Act in 1878 to tame the Indian press. To escape the Act, the Amrita Bazar Patrika of Calcutta became an entirely English paper overnight. It was bilingual until then. Many Indian papers proudly call themselves vernacular. The word vernacular means 'home-born slave'. The press, of course, tells truth.

Men in Kenya are on a month-long sex boycott to protest against fanatic feminism. Their women staged a week-long sex boycott last month, demanding an end to violent political clashes. The prime minister's wife joined the strike. In the ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata, by Aristophanes, women go on a sex strike to force their men to stop a long war between Athens and Sparta. The leader of the strike tells her friends: "If we sit indoors dressed in our transparent silks, with our pubis nicely plucked, their tools will become so hard that they won't be able to deny us anything." The strategy is to tease, torture and tame.

Aristophanes savaged Socrates in the play The Clouds. He opposed the philosopher's liberal views on youth and women. Sharad Yadav of the Janata Dal says he likes Socrates and is ready to take poison if Parliament passes the women's reservation bill. In The Assembly of Women, another play by Aristophanes, women disguised as men take over the legislature and pass feminist laws. One law grants the ugliest women the right to drag any man to bed. Praxagora, the feminist leader in the play, tells her friends: "It would be a fine thing if one of us, in the midst of discussion, rushed on to the Speaker's platform and, flinging her cloak aside, showed her hairy privates." Were he in ancient Greece, Yadav would have recorded if she wore lipstick and where.
wickedword09@gmail.com
*This article appeared in the Indian newsmagazine The Week (www.the-week.com) in June 2009.

I am what I am

Hemingway took a ten-dollar bet and wrote a short story in six words: "For sale: Baby shoes, not used." Samuel Beckett wrote a half-minute play, Breath, which was wordless. All it had was two identical cries, one of birth and the other of death. Victor Hugo was on vacation when Les Miserables was published. He sent the publisher a telegram which had just one character, '?'. The publisher cabled back an ecstatic exclamation mark. King Philip of Macedon wrote a threatening letter to Spartans: "If I enter Laconia, I will raze the city of Sparta." The Spartans sent a one-word retort: "If."

Laconic means using very few words. The word comes from Laconia. President Pratibha Patil used half the laconic 'If' to swear in the new ministers. All she had to say was "I". She uttered it 158 times without a stutter. "After us, the deluge," said Madame De Pompadour, a mistress of Louis XV. Likewise, fools thought, after Kalam, calamity. Patil proved them wrong no doubt.

Patil was an infant -- the word infant means one without speech -- when Haile Selassie addressed the League of Nations in June 1936. It was about mustard bombing by Italy. "I, Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, am here today…," he began. The I after the name Selassie is neither a numeral nor an initial. It is Patil's well-practised word, I.

I is central to spiritualists. A spiritualist, Baba Lekhraj, spoke with the Rashtrapati after his death. The Rastafari believe Selassie is alive; he is God's incarnation. The Christian cult, popular in Jamaica, is named after him: he was Ras Tafari (Prince Tafari) before he became emperor. The Rastafari say "I and I" to link the individual I with the cosmic I. Iyaric, their English lingo, is replete with I. Creator is irator in Iyaric; creation is iration. God is Jah, as seen in hallelujah. They swear by ganja, reggae and dreadlocks.

Elvis Presley had pompadour hair. M.S. Dhoni wore long locks like Kalam when he first caught the public eye. "My hair and beard have turned grey" in the last two years, says the cricketer. Hair has the same root as hoary and horror. Hoary means grey with age, hence venerable. Hair stands on end (Latin horrere) when you feel horror. Dhoni can cause horripilation, or goose bumps, when he hits the ball over the top. To go 'over the top' means to take risks. It also means to have an orgasm.

Sir Toby tells Sir Andrew in Twelfth Night that his hair hangs like flax on a distaff; "and I hope to see a housewife take thee between her legs and spin it off." Dishevelled is hair (French chevel) in disarray. Ophelia tells her father how Hamlet, looking dishevelled, held her hard while she was sewing in her closet, and how she broke free and denied him access. Shakespeare scholars claim the word access here means intercourse. 'Accessory' in the 19th century meant smaller articles of a woman's dress.

Merkin, an old accessory, was the female beard. Prostitutes wore this pubic wig over shaven genitals to hide scars or for aesthetic effect. Fashionable young men in Elizabethan England wore a codpiece over their trousers. This pouch held the genitals and exaggerated the bulge. Like Elvis the Pelvis, young men everywhere like to swagger as Bulgarians.

Many ministers gagged on the word 'conscientiously' while swearing "I will faithfully and conscientiously discharge my duties…" Conscientiously is a mouthful, with a foul link. Like science, it shares its root -- skei -- with the word shit. Doing one's duty is a euphemism for defecation. Pistol, a character in Henry IV, is quick to discharge. Sir John Falstaff tells him: "Here, Pistol, I charge you with a cup of sack: do you discharge upon mine hostess." Pistol replies: "I will discharge upon her, Sir John, with two bullets." His bullets are his testicles. Discharge your duty, by all means, but keep the oath of secrecy.
wickedword09@gmail.com

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