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In my childhood in Muthukur we were often scolded by our elders for our naughtiness and mischief and misbehavior and uncouthness and such.
The most frequent term of abuse was: "Donkey!"
Both RKN and Mark Twain would have found 'donkey' a compliment rather than an abuse. RKN heaps praise on the saintliness of the Indian donkey while Mark Twain pays his American counterpart the highest compliment:
"Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn't any. But this wrongs the jackass"
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In my childhood in Muthukur we were often scolded by our elders for our naughtiness and mischief and misbehavior and uncouthness and such.
The most frequent term of abuse was: "Donkey!"
Both RKN and Mark Twain would have found 'donkey' a compliment rather than an abuse. RKN heaps praise on the saintliness of the Indian donkey while Mark Twain pays his American counterpart the highest compliment:
"Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn't any. But this wrongs the jackass"
We of course never minded being called a donkey which we used to watch everyday with pleasure...except when she brayed heartily at midnight disturbing our well-earned sleep.
For the record, whenever I get annoyed nowadays with the tricks of Ishani like when she gets up on my back while I sit in my bean chair and holds my ears swinging them and pretending to ride me, I call her: "Donkey!"...while in truth she means it to be the other way round.
Like my elders in my childhood, I also call her: "Temple Monkey" whenever she tries to hold the handle of her father's razor and pretends to shave herself.
And of course, for a change, when they were tired of donkey and monkey, our teachers called us "Dunnapota!" (He-buffalo!) and "Pandi!" (Pig!).
Another term of frequent abuse that was bestowed on us was: "Vedhava!".
I asked many of my seniors what exactly they meant by Vedhava but none could answer me to my satisfaction. Father told me that the term is a twist of "Vidhava" which of course meant a widow (or a widower like me now). Really speaking I never found a widow who was naughty like us during my time at Muthukur. And the abuse is not only undeserved but also senseless considering that most of us would one day end up as a widow or her male counterpart for no fault of ours.
...And then I reached Bengal and started speaking in English all the time...
Bengalis have a great sense of humor and wrote 'nonsense poetry' like the famous Abol Tabol by Sukumar Ray, father of Satyajit Ray.
So I thought that 'nonsense' was an acceptable term in the Bengal of my time. But I was surprised when I found my Bengali friends utterly offended when someone said: "nonsense" to whatever they spoke or wrote. They were ok with terms like 'wrong', 'fallacious', and even 'silly', but 'nonsense' for them was the ultimate swearword, I don't know why.
So I used to avoid that word for all of forty years.
But towards the end of my career I myself was subjected to variants of this swearword by my American-returned younger female colleagues.
One of them who was taking her first year tutorial classes approached me for a clear explanation of her doubt and I told her:
"You see, it doesn't matter for the first years if the vibration spiral winds up slow or fast as long as it does it reasonably well and ends up at the center"
And, to my consternation, she said:
"Yea! Yea! Now I see! It makes sense!"
And I found no reason why I should have felt offended by 'sense' rather than 'nonsense'.
And she reverted to me another day saying:
"What GK was speaking in the Faculty Meeting yesterday makes no sense"
Again I was taken aback...she didn't call it 'nonsense' but only that it 'makes no sense'
For the record, she was a Bengali lady...
...Posted by Ishani (a true-blue Bengali name)
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