What a Shame!

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Late one evening in 1968 in the Faculty Club of IIT KGP, I was playing badminton (mixed doubles) under floodlights. On the other side of the court was Mrs Dhar, fiftyish, not often seen in the Club. Prof and Mrs Dhar were just back from their umpteenth trip to England, he with his perennial pipe in his mouth, and she not very comely but free.

Unfortunately, while tackling a long shot, I slipped, took a tumble, fell down like a ton of bricks, sprained an ankle, and what was worse, my bat broke into two at its neck.

On seeing my spectacular dive and its aftermath, Mrs Dhar shook her head gravely and exclaimed:

"O, What a shame! What a shame!! What a shame!!!"

As I retired hurt and limped back into the Hall for the first-aid box, I was seething with anger, humiliation, and was about to break down at the ass I made of myself and more so, the word, 'shame' lingering in my ears...I was boiling inside and almost wished to get back and ask her:

"What is so shameful in a sports injury, my dear Ma'am?"

But as usual, post-eventful thoughts of delayed repartees only make matters worse. Hundreds are the times when I was in bed and thought of a juicy retort in vain....like closing the doors of the stable after the horses have bolted.


It was only much much later that I figured that "What a shame!" is an idiom like "What a pity!", neither of which has anything to do with shame or pity as such but a remorseful way of consoling: "Isn't that too unfortunate!"

And I felt sorry for being so angry with Mrs Dhar and felt like apologizing to her for my misunderstanding...

So, it has always been with me vis-a-vis colloquial English when I went to a high-brow place like KGP from a University Town in AP where we never conversed in English and all the English we knew was learned from our text books of the Victorian era...Queen's English.


Walking along the Scholar's Avenue (a big hyperbole) in the early days of my sojourn there I used to routinely hear the undergraduates cycling along and throwing the word: 'bastard' as if it was an endearment. At first I was stunned that no one took offense but rather enjoyed. And by and by I got inured to it.


I quote below Aniket's recent mail to me:

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"Dear Sir,

This one must rank amongst your best posts till date. Had me laughing my guts out...."

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He was referring to my post:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2012/05/curtsey.html

of which the last para reads:

" ...A fortnight later my friend Vinod visited my room and said, laughing aloud:

"GP! I overheard one fair bespectacled lad on his pushbike talking about you in the most abusive terms"

"How?"

"He was saying to his friend: 'There is this new Research Scholar to whom I was allotted for my viva...I don't know...they call him GP or something...he is the greatest b*****d I have ever seen'..."

I laughed and said: "No more silly talk of Peace in the Phy Lab...Good!"

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They also had a feminine gender to it: 

"That b***ch turned me down"

'Bloody' and 'Damn' flowed like coke in their talks. 

But everyone wasn't taking them kindly. My senior colleague X got into hot waters trying to imitate the slang-lang of the UGs. There was this comely and cute student in our Phy Dept, very sincere and studious, but dressed in what he considered inappropriate wear...jeans and tops and bobbed auburn hair...an anathema to his middle class mores. And she was obviously from an upcountry Army background, daughter of a Colonel at the least. And X disapproved of her thoroughly as he used to tell us in the canteen.

One day, in the Class Room in 1970, while taking Roll Call he halted and asked her:

"Why were you absent yesterday?"

"Sir, I was unwell, sir"

"You are a DAMN liar! I saw you in the market"

That was all...she wasn't one to take it in a class room from a teacher whom I guess she didn't respect too much...she got up and walked out of the class...straight to our HoD, HNB's Office.

We heard that X was summoned to HNB's Office after the class was over and asked to apologize to her in private for an insult he dumped on her in public...HNB was Victorian in his English like the old school...

X apparently excused himself from the course which was passed on to a lesser mortal.

The sharp ejaculation: "Shit!" was a much later import to KGP. I heard it first from Dr Ghosh Dostidar of GG (the one who looks nowadays like a clone of Buddha Babu) while playing contract bridge in the Faculty Hostel. He was just back from Canada after completing his 5-year Ph D program and told me that ladies in Canada in the 1960s, when they have an urge to use this swear word, modify it and exclaim:

"Oh, Sh...oooot!"

So it was considered not lady-like even in Canada then. But by the 1980s I used to hear it routinely from boys and girls on the Scholars Avenue.

And the other day here I was in the street-corner Medical Shop waiting for my turn for this young Software Lady on her way back home to finish her shopping. Which she did elaborately and paid the cash to the shopkeeper and jumped down the stairs in a hurry to get back into her car. But I saw that in her hurry she forgot to pick up her medicine bag which she left on the counter. 

And, being the chivalrous old fool I am, I called out:

"Ma'am! Your medicines!"

And she turned back and ran up the stairs cursing:

"Oh! Shit!!"

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