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The other day I was mad at this anonymous commenter who was posting hundreds of robotic comments on my blogs. And I wanted to call him by a B-word.
I didn't hear the two famous B-words till I reached KGP in 1965. But the students there were using them so often that they became endearments instead of curses. They sort of devalued themselves by overuse. So, I wanted to find a euphemism for this SoB. And Google had them all except "Rambha Putra" which had no hits at all. So, I called him that:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2013/01/more-vandalisms.html
Not a very punju word but it was so so.
Dorothy Parker wanted to call a woman a strong name. But being a gentlewoman of Victorian virtues she called her a "she-dog".
Young women in our brahmin households during my childhood were not allowed to enter the kitchen and the puja room for the three days in a month when they were 'impure'. Those were the eons before the advent of sanitary napkins (whispers...what a euphemism!). In our ultra-orthodox family a woman during her periods was not even allowed to touch the common water nor mix with anyone or anything in the household. She had a separate room if one was available or a separate space otherwise. And if a kid wanted to touch its mom then, it had to be completely undressed, and stuff like that. My Father had to do the cooking and puja and feed us and my mom without touching her for those three miserable days.
We had a simple word for that state of the woman in our mother tongue: "muttu" which everyone understood. And when I was in Class VII just learning English, an alien dignitary visited our home and found my Father cooking. And my Father had to explain to him in English why. And I was curious what words he would use in his English for the sad state of my mom. And this is what he said:
"My wife is out of doors"
"Out of doors" my foot...she was very much "indoors"...only "out of mischief".
I recall Gandhiji writing in his truncated autobiography: "The Story of My Experiments with Truth" confessing that he did do that mischief with his wife while his father was in his deathbed and regretted it later. It is 30 years since I read that book and I find my copy missing...so I have to rely on my faltering memory but Gandhiji did several misdeeds in his life and so it gels.
Death has several euphemisms in every language. And "pass away" I think is very common. I had a lot of trouble with this 'pass'. I found that it was very common at IIT to use "pass out" for getting one's degree and getting lost. But 'pass out' for me always meant what one does after too much booze...after the convocation ritual.
In Bengali I heard it said of the dead:
"O aar neyi!" ("He is no more")
In Telugu it is: "He has gone away"
Cousins of euphemisms abound in modern science.
Mathematicians revel in giving simple names for the most intricate objects...like 'set', 'group', 'ring', 'field'...
"Modern Physics" in the 20th century went crazy with flash words for new particles. Proton and electron were ok. The came the chargeless particle which was dubbed "neutron". Then came Fermi with another chargeless particle but much much tinier. And he called it "neutrino" like Nino, the Italian child (El Nino). And later apes of this word went like "photino".
Dirac proposed an "antiparticle" of electron called "positron". And then every particle begot its antiparticle. For proton it was called "aniproton" and for neutron "antineutron". And "antineutrino" and such. But photon's antiparticle was itself; not "antiphoton". So also for I suppose graviton and gluon.
You may think that the antiparticle of the "God Particle" is the "Devil Particle"...but I guess it is not right.
Then came all those quarks with colors, charms and flavors...up, down, top, bottom...all misleading names trying to show off that Particle Physics is fun...which it is not.
The most funny name is "charmonium". Here it is...take it with you...it is free:
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I didn't hear the two famous B-words till I reached KGP in 1965. But the students there were using them so often that they became endearments instead of curses. They sort of devalued themselves by overuse. So, I wanted to find a euphemism for this SoB. And Google had them all except "Rambha Putra" which had no hits at all. So, I called him that:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.in/2013/01/more-vandalisms.html
Not a very punju word but it was so so.
Dorothy Parker wanted to call a woman a strong name. But being a gentlewoman of Victorian virtues she called her a "she-dog".
Young women in our brahmin households during my childhood were not allowed to enter the kitchen and the puja room for the three days in a month when they were 'impure'. Those were the eons before the advent of sanitary napkins (whispers...what a euphemism!). In our ultra-orthodox family a woman during her periods was not even allowed to touch the common water nor mix with anyone or anything in the household. She had a separate room if one was available or a separate space otherwise. And if a kid wanted to touch its mom then, it had to be completely undressed, and stuff like that. My Father had to do the cooking and puja and feed us and my mom without touching her for those three miserable days.
We had a simple word for that state of the woman in our mother tongue: "muttu" which everyone understood. And when I was in Class VII just learning English, an alien dignitary visited our home and found my Father cooking. And my Father had to explain to him in English why. And I was curious what words he would use in his English for the sad state of my mom. And this is what he said:
"My wife is out of doors"
"Out of doors" my foot...she was very much "indoors"...only "out of mischief".
I recall Gandhiji writing in his truncated autobiography: "The Story of My Experiments with Truth" confessing that he did do that mischief with his wife while his father was in his deathbed and regretted it later. It is 30 years since I read that book and I find my copy missing...so I have to rely on my faltering memory but Gandhiji did several misdeeds in his life and so it gels.
Death has several euphemisms in every language. And "pass away" I think is very common. I had a lot of trouble with this 'pass'. I found that it was very common at IIT to use "pass out" for getting one's degree and getting lost. But 'pass out' for me always meant what one does after too much booze...after the convocation ritual.
In Bengali I heard it said of the dead:
"O aar neyi!" ("He is no more")
In Telugu it is: "He has gone away"
Cousins of euphemisms abound in modern science.
Mathematicians revel in giving simple names for the most intricate objects...like 'set', 'group', 'ring', 'field'...
"Modern Physics" in the 20th century went crazy with flash words for new particles. Proton and electron were ok. The came the chargeless particle which was dubbed "neutron". Then came Fermi with another chargeless particle but much much tinier. And he called it "neutrino" like Nino, the Italian child (El Nino). And later apes of this word went like "photino".
Dirac proposed an "antiparticle" of electron called "positron". And then every particle begot its antiparticle. For proton it was called "aniproton" and for neutron "antineutron". And "antineutrino" and such. But photon's antiparticle was itself; not "antiphoton". So also for I suppose graviton and gluon.
You may think that the antiparticle of the "God Particle" is the "Devil Particle"...but I guess it is not right.
Then came all those quarks with colors, charms and flavors...up, down, top, bottom...all misleading names trying to show off that Particle Physics is fun...which it is not.
The most funny name is "charmonium". Here it is...take it with you...it is free:
...Posted by Ishani
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