The moment we open our mouth and begin to speak in English, people are usually able to guess which part of India we are from. Each region has its own idiosyncrasy. For example, when you hear a person pronouncing ‘pleasure’ like the word ‘player’, you know that the speaker is from Punjab. Someone who says ‘bite’ when he means ‘white’ is probably from the Eastern region of India. The individual who takes great delight in listening to ‘pope music’ instead of ‘pop music’ is likely to be from Gujarat. People who don’t really make a distinction in the pronunciation of the letters ‘m’ and ‘n’ are probably from one of the southern states in India. When I was in college, as a form of ragging, I was repeatedly ordered to spell, as quickly as possible, the word ‘minimum’. Every time I did, the ‘seniors’ used to burst out laughing listening to my ‘Madrasi English’. Poking fun at people because of the manner in which they speak is not something new; it has been going on since time immemorial.

The manner in which we speak to a very large extent depends on the place we come from, and the strata of society we belong to. The Greeks, who gave a lot of importance to rhetoric and prosody, have given us a number of words that describe the idiosyncratic manner in which people speak. ‘Laconic’ and ‘solecism’ are only two such examples. What makes these words interesting is that both are derived from the names of places. A person who is ‘laconic’ is normally brief; he/she does not use too many words to say what he wants to. When I was young and wished to improve my vocabulary, in order to remember the meaning of this word, I always remembered the films in which Amitabh Bachchan played the role of the angry young man. Remember our Vijay in ‘Deewar’, ‘Zanjeer’, ‘Sholay’ and ‘Trishul’? In these movies, Amitabh hardly spoke; he was laconic. Whenever the heroine or villain spoke at length about something, the angry young man with his brooding eyes listened to them intently, and responded in a single word/line. The character Vijay was a man of very few words; his replies were usually blunt and brief. Imagine trying to carry on a conversation with such a person in real life!

Worse still, imagine what life would be like if you lived in a place where everyone was laconic as Vijay! Apparently, there was one such place in southern Greece a long time ago. It was called ‘Lakonikos’ and it was very close to the famous city of Sparta. It is from ‘Lakonikos’ that we get the word ‘laconic’. The people who lived in this region were known for their ability to ration their words. (If only our politicians could master this skill!) Whatever they said, it was to the point. The story goes that Philip of Macedon sent a message of warning to the Lakonians. The message was: “If I enter Lakoniko with my army, I shall raze Sparta to the ground. I will destroy it.” The Lakonikans terse response to this threat was “If”!

The Greeks were also instrumental in giving us ‘solecism’, a word meaning ‘non-standard’ or ungrammatical use of language. Like ‘laconic’, it too is derived from the name of a place. ‘Solecism’ comes from ‘Soloi’, a province in the region of Cilicia – the ancient name of southern Turkey. During the glory days of the Greek empire, Soloi was a part of Greece. Being far removed from Athens, the people who lived in the province of Soloi didn’t have regular contact with native speakers of Greek. As a result, they developed a dialect of their own. When the ‘true Greeks’ came to visit Soloi, they were shocked by the rather crude and ungrammatical language that was being used in the province. As everyone in ‘Soloi’ spoke this crude language, the Greeks came up with the word ‘soloikos’ meaning to ‘speak ungrammatical Greek like the people of Soloi’. It is from this that we get the word ‘solecism’ meaning to make an error while speaking or writing.

This practice of identifying people by the manner in which they speak and referring to them by the place name was common in England as well. Take for example, the word ‘billingsgate’. Nowadays, the word is used to refer to the crude or foul language used by someone. For example, we sometimes hear people say that the workers hurled more billingsgate at their boss after his speech. ‘Billingsgate’ is actually the name of place in London. In the past, it was a well-known fish market close to the London Bridge. During its heyday, the place was well known for two things – the smell of fish and the abusive language used by the people doing business there. Believe it or not, the people using the filthy language were mostly women! The fishwives who conducted business in Billingsgate were famous not only for their salted fish, but also their salty language! It is for this reason that billingsgate means ‘abusive or foul language’. When someone swears, he usually loses his temper and makes use of plenty of unnecessary words. Makes you wonder what a laconic person does when he has to swear. Is he able to ration his adjectives when he is angry?

The author teaches at The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. He can be reached at supendran@gmail.com.

Benjamin Franklin once said that there are only two certainties in life – death and income tax. If the man of many inventions had been working as a teacher in India, he would have added one more unfortunate certainty to his short list – election duty! Come election time, when dubious characters of questionable integrity make a run for Parliament or the Assembly, teachers remain quivering in their shoes as they wait for the dreaded polling duty list to be released. When I was green, I used to wail much like the woman in Coleridge’s poem ‘Kubla Khan’ whenever I found my name on the list. But now that I’m mature, I realize that performing this task every five years is one way of expiating all the sins that I have committed in that period. One needn’t go to Kasi or Benaras anymore.

For the general elections in 2004, I received a letter informing me that I had been made a Presiding Officer and that it was mandatory to undergo a two-day training course. When I entered the room, the lady IAS officer who had the unenviable task of training us was at the mike welcoming the reluctant participants. The importance of election duty is not a topic that is likely to enthuse those who have been arm-twisted into doing it; such tasks should be assigned to individuals who are capable of galvanizing a crowd – especially an inert mass like ours. Unfortunately, the woman in charge lacked both the communication skills and the enthusiasm to do this. Her apology of a presentation combined with the April heat succeeded in putting us to sleep.

A week after the training session, another letter followed; this time it was to inform me that I had been posted in Zaheerabad and that I was to report for duty two days prior to the elections. Spending two days at the polling station was bad enough, but three? I decided that I would do no such thing. When I reached Zaheerabad a day before the elections, I found pandemonium reigned in the Junior College that I was asked to report. The man who had taken an adhesive attitude to the mike was screaming his head off, and like me there were many others who were reporting for duty a day late. When I handed in my order, the man asked me why I hadn’t reported a day earlier. I told him that since I had undergone training in Hyderabad I didn’t think it a necessity to come two days in advance. He shook his head sagely and gave me my polling station number. Before meeting the rest of the members of my group, I decided that I needed to relieve myself and so asked a zonal officer where the bathroom was. He pointed to a distant compound wall, smiled and said, “Outside, sir”. Since I was in no mood to water the plants or the trees, I went ahead and met the rest of the members of the group who had all arrived the day before. I asked them what happened. Rajender, the Assistant Presiding Officer summed it up in one word, “nothing”. Apparently the Zonal Officers made them sit under the shamiana all day long informing them that they would receive training. But nothing happened.

After picking up our electronic voting machines and various other forms and envelopes, we sat together under the shamiana. The constant announcements on the mike gave me a headache. I was assured by my assitant that the school that we had been assigned was a good one. I had visions of a Hyderabad Public School, but when we finally reached our destination in a jeep, I found that the school consisted of three or four small rooms inside a temple. The classroom that we had been given had no fan and no lights. We were asked to spend the day in the temple hall and get ready for the following day. The rest of the day was spent in filling out the various forms and in the setting up of the polling station. We realized that the authorities hadn’t provided us with the sticks required to set up the voting booths; instead of waiting for the authorities, we bought the sticks ourselves. As I went to bed that night, I kept reminding myself that the following day at 5: 00 p.m, I would be a free man.

The next day began early. Since there were no lights, I used my nose to find the bathroom. Unlike the other rooms, the bathroom was air conditioned – the top half of the door was completely missing. As I sat there, I was reminded of Shakespeare’s line from Macbeth: “not all the perfumes of Arabia can wash the stains off my hand”. Except in this case, the second half of the line would have been replaced with “can remove the stink from this bathroom”.

The polling went off without a hitch; we packed everything according to the instructions given to us in the Presiding Officer’s manual. But as it usually happens in Indian bureaucracy, the instructions given to the Returning Officer were entirely different! This resulted in our having to remove papers from sealed envelopes and resealing them.

There were moments of amusement as well. On the day of elections, at 7 a.m, when the polling was all set to commence, the Polling Officer from the adjacent polling station came running and wanted help in sealing the electronic machine. As I stepped out to help him, the voters standing in line asked, “kya saab chai pine ja rahen hai kya?” Another replied, “nahin, saab abhi training ke liye ja rahen hai kya”?

The author teaches at The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. He can be reached at supendran@gmail.com.

A couple of months ago, I watched Angelina Jolie’s film ‘Salt’, a story about a CIA operative whose solution to any problem is to whip out a gun and shoot her way out of it. Like most thrillers, one had to suspend disbelief to enjoy the fast-paced action. As I sat enthralled, watching Ms. Jolie jumping from one speeding truck to another, I wondered if the heroine, one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood, was actually worth her salt. Do producers really end up making money by casting her in films like Salt? Googling the actor and film suggest that she most definitely is; according to various Hollywood sources, the movie made well over 300 million dollars at the box office, and there are already talks about a sequel.

Angelina Jolie as Evelyn Salt is definitely worth her salt, no question about her being worth her salary. Nowadays, potential grooms and brides are on the look out for a partner who has a five figure or six figure salary. Just imagine the amount of salt one could buy with that kind of money! In case you are wondering why I am fixated on the word ‘salt’, it is because the modern word ‘salary’ comes from the Latin ‘salarium’ meaning ‘salt allowance’. Yes, that’s right, the original salary was nothing more than a nominal sum given to someone to buy some salt – and that too, the non-iodized variety!

During the times of the Roman Empire, when supposedly all roads lead to Rome, soldiers used to receive their wages partly in cash, and partly in kind. They were given money and a packet of salt as part of their weekly/monthly allowance. This essential ingredient used in all forms of cooking was a rare and precious commodity at that time. All of Europe was importing salt from other countries because the cold and damp weather on the continent made it impossible for people to manufacture salt. This is why the Romans gave their soldiers salt as part of their wages; since the rise of the Roman Empire depended heavily on the disciplined soldiers, the Emperor ensured the soldiers ate well and enjoyed what they ate. Later, when salt became available in plenty, instead of giving them a packet of the ingredient, soldiers were given a special allowance with which they could buy salt. This special allowance was called ‘salarium’.

So the ‘salary’ that we so proudly bring home every month is nothing more than a ‘salt allowance’. Hard to swallow, isn’t it? Perhaps you are taking everything I have written so far with a pinch of salt. Ah, another idiom with ‘salt’. We know that when someone tells us something, and we take it with a ‘grain’ or ‘pinch’ of salt, we do not totally believe everything he has said. We have certain reservations; we are sceptical about some of the information that has been given. Now, this particular idiom which has been part of the English language since the mid 17^th century is actually a translation of the Latin ‘cum grano salis’. According to some scholars, Pliny the Elder, in his book Naturalis Historia, wrote that Pompey (Julius Caesar’s son-in-law) had discovered that his enemy, Mathridates, had found the perfect antidote to poison. Pliny said that for this antidote to work effectively, it had to be taken with a pinch of salt! Readers however thought that the reference to salt was a tongue-in-cheek remark: something that was not to be taken seriously. Another theory which has been put forward is that the idiom comes from the world of dining: a sprinkling of salt from the cellar can give life to something that is insipid.

The humble salt cellar on the dining table was not only used to make food palatable, but also served as a marker of an individual’s status. For example, the idiom ‘sit below the salt’, a rather old-fashioned expression, is sometimes used to refer to a person of very low status: someone with little or no social standing; someone who is generally looked down upon by others. This rather quaint expression has been around for over four hundred years. In the past, when guests were invited to dinner, a relatively large salt shaker was placed in the middle of the long dining table. The most important people among the guests were always seated next to the host. These individuals who were seated at the host’s end of the table were considered to be ‘above the salt’ – in other words, they were people of very high social standing. Guests who were of a lower rank, sat at the lower end of the table; they sat ‘below the salt’.

I guess ‘sitting below the salt’ is something that Anjelina Jolie doesn’t have to worry about. Most hosts would give an arm and a leg to have her sit next to them. In case you are wondering when Salt II is being released, it all depends on when ‘Evelyn Salt’ returns to the salt mines!

The author teaches at The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. He can be reached at supendran@gmail.com.

‘Wherever you go, we follow,’ purrs the male voice for a network service. The ad just about sums up the kind of life we lead today. People have means of keeping tabs on our every move; there is no getting away from it all. Thanks to the ubiquitous cell phone, we have been reduced to a welcome doormat; we are available to others 24/7. People are often heard using juicy adjectives when the wretched instrument rings, but are reluctant to switch it off, lest there be an ‘emergency’ (imagined or otherwise).

Life in the 1960s and early 1970s was so much simpler. People stayed in touch with others not through Facebook, Twitter, or the cell phone, but by actually visiting each other. Weekends were a time when you visited or received people. As not everyone was the proud owner of a phone those days, these visits were usually unannounced. Friends and relatives would ‘take a chance’ and drop in at odd hours of the day and spend a couple of hours with you. Visitors seldom walked past the threshold of your house with a sense of trepidation, since people then were generally happy to play the role of the host. Things changed in the late 70s and early 80s when television invaded our homes in a big way. Weekends meant watching the serials and the Hindi/regional film shown on the only channel available. If you visited a friend unannounced, you were made to sit with the rest of the family and watch the film/serial, whether you wanted to or not!

Nowadays, of course, we have serials on all days of the week, with each channel broadcasting more than one every day. The media constantly refer to these serials as ‘soaps’. Any idea why they are called so? ‘Soaps’ or ‘soap operas’, as they are sometimes called, existed even before television came into our lives. The original soaps were broadcast on the radio; these melodramas with their slow moving plots were broadcast in the afternoons on all weekdays, and were targeted at housewives. Even today, in countries like America and Canada, soaps like ‘Bold and the Beautiful and ‘Guiding Light’ are broadcast Monday through Friday in the afternoons. Since the audience for the radio drama was mainly housewives who were taking a break from their busy schedule, the sponsors for the show consisted of companies that manufactured products that appealed to the gentler sex. As luck would have it, during the early years of broadcast, the main sponsor was usually a company that manufactured soaps and detergents! Makes you wonder what such serials would have been called if the main sponsor had been a company that manufactured toilet bowl cleaners! The word ‘opera’ was tagged on to ‘soap’, not because the characters in the early radio drama burst into song every now and then, but because the plot was so highly sentimental and complex, it reminded people of the opera. Hence the term, ‘soap opera’. The term was adopted by the television industry when it started to produce and broadcast such programmes. Although not all ‘soaps’ these days are sponsored by companies that manufacture soaps and detergents, the term continues to be used to refer to such programmes. In most western countries, soaps are still broadcast only in the afternoons.

We generally use soap and detergent to keep our body and clothes clean. Now ‘clean’ is not a word that we would normally associate with politicians – which perhaps explains why our politicians are better known for their ability to use the crate in which the product comes, rather than the product itself! Politicians, the world over, are sometimes referred to as ‘soapbox orators’. In the old days, when people wished to make a speech in a place of public gathering, they usually stood on a wooden box and spoke. They did this so that everyone in the audience could see them. The wooden box, which served as a makeshift podium, was called a ‘soapbox’, and people who stood on one and gave a passionate speech on something that was close to their heart were called ‘soapbox orators’. Immediately after 9/11, whenever George W Bush appeared on TV, what did he talk about? Terrorism! It became his soapbox, his favourite topic. Presently in India, Anna Hazare’s soapbox is ‘corruption’ and that of Rahul Gandhi’s is the contribution of his family to the growth of the country and the Congress party.

Soap users know that the more you use a bar, the more it dissolves and the smaller it becomes. Sometimes, it becomes so small that we find it difficult to hold on to it. What does one do with the small piece that remains? Some people just throw it away. Others attach it to the new bar of soap that they are going to use. This process of attaching a small piece of soap to a brand new one is called ‘soap grafting’. Certainly cheaper than hair grafting, don’t you think?

The author teaches at The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. He can be reached at supendran@gmail.com.

When I had completed my PhD in the US, and was bidding farewell to my teachers, one of them said, “Why don’t you stay back and work here? You can easily get a job, you know.” What the poor man didn’t realize was that having worked in a university in India for over ten years, I had been thoroughly spoiled. The American Dream held no fascination for me. I wanted to go back to a world that would allow me to put my feet up and chew on the occasional paan. I told my teacher, “Back home at my university, I work five days a week. I get the weekends off. I also get six weeks off during summer and a month off during winter. In addition to this, we have nearly 20 national holidays. I am also entitled to take ten days off as and when I please. We lose a few working days now and then because either the students or the teachers are on strike. I work less than two hundred days in a year.” The teacher looked at me for a few seconds and then asked, “Can I get a job there?”

When you think about it, who wouldn’t want to have such a job? If you ask me, being a teacher in India is probably one of the best jobs in the world. True, we don’t make the big bucks that software engineers and doctors do, but the quality of life we lead is so much better. We get time to read, watch movies, and spend time with the members of the family. Which software engineer can say that? Of course, the fact that you are home quite a lot is not always appreciated by the other members of the family. Take for example, my case. Even before I tied the dreaded knot, I always went home for lunch as I lived on campus. My wife, who was more used to the corporate style of work, found this rather strange. Two weeks into our marriage, when I rang the bell around one o’clock, she greeted me with a romantic, ‘You’re back already?’

Software engineers and doctors not only have to put in long hours, but they also have to dress well. We teachers, on the other hand, are not always expected to be sartorially resplendent. For someone like me who has little or no dress sense, teaching is the ideal job. Of course, this habit of mine to dress any which way I like has sometimes gotten me into awkward situations. After I had been admitted to the PhD programme with a teaching assistantship, I received a note from the department asking me to meet the Dean around two in the afternoon. Since the university hadn’t officially reopened, I was dressed casually. I walked into the department office dripping with sweat, in shorts, t-shirt, and a baseball cap. Before I could say anything, the Office Assistant who saw me enter asked, “Have you come to learn English?” The question floored me, and I didn’t know what to say. Convinced that I didn’t know any English, she asked the same question again. This time she said each word slowly and spoke much louder. Once I informed her who I was, she apologized profusely and pointed me in the direction of the Dean’s room. As I was leaving, I saw a poster to the right of the Office Assistant. It read ‘Free English classes for migrant farm workers’. Looking at the colour of my skin and the way I was dressed, the woman probably thought I was some illegal migrant from Mexico working in one of the local peanut farms in Georgia!

As teachers we are expected to be in school/college on time, spend time preparing for classes, teach to the best of our ability, correct homework, and if possible set a good example for the students. But, being a teacher wasn’t always this simple. Here are two documents that show how much more was expected from the teacher in the U.S. in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Read and enjoy.

Instructions to Teachers (Mason Street School, San Diego, 1872)

1. Teachers will fill lamps, clean chimneys, and trim wicks every day.
2. Each teacher will bring a scuttle of coal, and a bucket of water for the day’s use.
3. Men teachers may take one evening a week off for courting purposes or two evenings a week if they go to church regularly.
4. Women teachers who marry or engage in other unseemly conduct will be dismissed.
5. The teacher who performs his labours faithfully without fault for five years will be given an increase of 25 cents a week in his pay – provided the Board of Education approves.

By 1901 the rules had become even more draconian.

1. You must not marry during the term of your contract.
2. School mistresses shall not keep company with men.
3. You must not travel beyond town limits without the written permission of the Chairman of the Board.
4. You may under no circumstances dye your hair or wear bright coloured clothes.
5. School mistresses must wear at least two petticoats. School masters shall wear a suit, coat, and suspenders.
6. To keep classroom neat and clean, you must sweep the floor once a day and scrub the floor at least once a week with hot soapy water.
7. To keep the classroom warm, you must start a fire by 7 AM so that room is warm by 8.

Aren’t you glad you weren’t a teacher then? Happy Teachers’ Day!

The author teaches at The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. He can be reached at supendran@gmail.com.

The first time I saw the entertaining Hollywood western, ‘The Quick and the Dead’ in 1996, the presence of the word ‘quick’ in the title did not strike me as being odd. Since the plot revolved around a competition to determine who the fastest gun in a small town was, I had assumed, rather naively I might add, that the word ‘quick’ referred to those who could ‘draw’ their weapon quickly. Those who did not manage to do so were the ones who ended up ‘dead’. Satisfied with this logical explanation, I didn’t give much thought to the title till I saw the film again nearly ten years later. Much as I enjoyed watching the Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, Sharon Stone starrer all over again, something about the title kept nagging me, and this prompted me to consult a dictionary of etymology. I looked up the word ‘quick’ and I realized how clumsy my first interpretation had been. I learnt that the word ‘quick’ comes from the Old English ‘cwic’ and it originally meant ‘alive’ or ‘living’. So ‘The Quick and the Dead’ literally means ‘The Living and the Dead’ – it makes a lot more sense now, doesn’t it? With the passage of time, ‘quick’ began to acquire a very different meaning. It took nearly several centuries for it to acquire its present meaning related to speed. But, like many words in English, ‘quick’ has retained its original meaning in certain fixed expressions.

‘Bald’ is another word that has retained its original meaning in certain contexts. We frequently use the expression ‘bald as a coot’ to refer to someone who has little or no hair. But how many of us know what a coot is? Bird lovers among us may know that a ‘coot’ is a rather small, dark bird usually found swimming in lakes and ponds. Like all birds, it has feathers covering its entire body, including its head. If this is the case, then why is this unfortunate bird often compared to an individual with no hair? A distinctive feature of the coot is that it has a white patch on its head, and it is for this reason that the bird was dubbed ‘bald coot’. One of the meanings of the word ‘bald’, which not many of us may be familiar with, is ‘marked with white’. The white spot on the coot’s head gave rise to the idiom ‘bald as a coot’. This also explains how the national emblem of the United States of America, the ‘bald eagle’, got its name. The body of this majestic bird is uniformly brown, but its head is covered with white feathers. From a distance, the white pate gives the impression the bird has no feathers on its head – like the coot, it looks bald!

Referring to various sources and picking up such crumbs of information often helps us to make sense of other words as well. Knowing that ‘quick’ means ‘living’, it becomes easy to understand how ‘quicksand’ got its name, and why the Romans dubbed mercury ‘quicksilver’. We know from films and books that when an individual falls into quicksand, he doesn’t sink to the bottom very quickly. The process of being sucked in is often an agonizingly slow and painful one. This particular sand was given its name because unlike other sand, it was alive (quick) – it was capable of slowly dragging you in. If sand can be ‘quick’, then why can’t metal? The Romans believed it was possible for metal to be a living substance as well, and that’s why they called mercury ‘argentum vivum’, meaning ‘living silver’. When the English translated this Latin term into their language, it became ‘quicksilver’. Mercury was given this name because this silver coloured metal was actually liquid in form, and being a liquid, it was capable of movement. This mobility gave the impression that it was ‘quick’, in other words, ‘alive’.

Like quicksand and mercury, language too is a ‘quick’ (living) entity. It keeps changing, and some of the old expressions provide evidence how much it has changed. When you take someone out to dinner, the expectations are you will play host and pay the bill. Your guest will expect you to pick up the tab or foot the bill. How does one actually foot the bill? Do you kick it? Believe it or not, the ‘foot’ in the expression has nothing to do with our feet. When a waiter requested you to ‘foot the bill’ in the 15^th century, he wanted you to add up the figures and make sure that the total at the bottom or the foot of the bill was correct. The expression ‘foot up’, which is no longer in use, meant ‘count’ or ‘add up’. It was only in the 19^th century that the expression ‘foot the bill’ began to mean what it does today.

The author teaches at The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. He can be reached at supendran@gmail.com.

Women have been fighting for equal rights for several centuries now; the ongoing battle, according to some, may continue to be waged well into the next millennium. To their credit, the so called ‘gentle sex’, who at one time had no role to play other than to look pretty (“Women are meant to be seen, not heard”), have notched up several notable victories – the right to vote, the right to an education, and the right to work. The common enemy in all the fights have been MEN, and the various manmade institutions created by them to keep women under their well-trodden heel. In the mid twentieth century, women in most English speaking countries found a new, and perhaps an unusual irritant to vent their spleen on – the English language. They argued that English was sexist; it was, in their opinion, an MCP! To set matters right, they took it upon themselves of making the language in which Shakespeare excelled, less gender biased. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the Women’s Liberation Movement was slowly gaining momentum and making front page news in most newspapers, words which had been part of the everyday language for centuries began to be put under the microscope, and their very existence questioned. A word which women took a serious objection to was ‘history’. An innocuous word in itself, but in the eyes of Gloria Steinem and her band of feminist sisters, it was yet another example of how male dominant the English language was. They argued that ‘history’ was the story of man; history, they said, was from ‘his story’. They were wrong of course, for the word has nothing to do with the pronoun ‘his’. History comes from the Greek ‘historia’, meaning ‘learning or learning by inquiry’. But the leading figures of the movement would have none of it, and insisted that the time had come for the story of the human race to be retold or rewritten from a woman’s perspective. They called this revised version, ‘herstory’. Soon, publication firms like Virago Press sprang up to give voice to the concerns of women.

The Women’s Liberation Movement not only gave rise to a lot of new words, but also brought about alterations in existing ones. It was during this period that the famous ‘Ms.’ was coined. Women argued that the title ‘Mr.’ was a neutral term; based on the title, one would not be able to say with any degree of certainty whether the man in question was married or single. The titles which were used to address a woman – ’Mrs.’ and ‘Miss’, on the other hand, made no attempt to keep her marital state a secret. Women demanded a similar title for themselves, and they came up with ‘Ms’ (pronounced ‘miz’). In this age of ‘We are as good as you’, it is not surprising that the word ‘unisex’ was also coined. This rather turbulent period also saw the first bold attempts made to make the language gender free. Suffixes ‘-ess’ and ‘man’, for example, were deemed ‘sexist’ and they became the first casualty in the war against discrimination against women. In a matter of few years, these two suffixes were confined to the mothballs: actress, authoress, and poetess became actor, author, and poet. Women saw red whenever they came across a word which had ‘man’ as a suffix; it is not surprising therefore that this suffix too was soon guillotined: chairman and salesman became a gender neutral ‘chairperson’ and ‘salesperson’. It wasn’t long before ladies turned their guns on any word which contained ‘man’ in it, and proceeded to emasculate it: ‘mankind’ was changed to ‘humanity’, ‘manpower’ to ‘human resources’, ‘manmade’ to ‘artificial’, and ‘man the desk’ became ‘staff the desk’. The seeds of change had been sown; soon, any word that could be identified with either of the sexes found its head on the chopping block. Result? ‘Husband’ became ‘spouse’ and ‘wife’ became a much more respectable sounding ‘homemaker’. ‘Parenting’ and ‘nurturing’ replaced the old fashioned ‘mothering’.

Such types of changes continue to be made even today. It is now the age of political correctness, and people are taking ridiculously extraordinary measures to ensure they are not labelled sexist. A gender free word like ‘partner’ is being used to refer to both husband and wife. A few choose to employ the term ‘significant other’. Sometimes, the wife is given an honorary degree and is elevated to the status of a ‘domestic engineer’. A woman who functions as a secretary is now referred to as ‘administrative assistant’. Such changes have been made not only in the roles that we play, but also in the subjects that we study. Nowadays, it is no longer PC to refer to the subject of Home Science by its old name – after all, it is girls who specialize in this subject, and hence it becomes obligatory to give it a neutral term. It should come as no surprise that the title has been spruced up and now goes under the name ‘Family and Consumer Sciences’! Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? Men are no longer MCPs, they merely have ‘swine empathy’, and the poor ‘manhole’ has become a ‘maintenance portal’ or ‘utility hole’. All these changes have been made in order to come up with gender neutral terms, and native speakers of English are going the extra mile to come up with them. Presently, the U.S. Government is making a concerted effort to remove the words ‘father’ and ‘mother’ from all application forms. They would like to have these words replaced by the terms ‘Parent 1’ and ‘Parent 2’. They call these impersonal terms “an improvement” over the emotionally laden terms ‘father’ and ‘mother’. In their website, the State Department claims: “These improvements are being made to provide gender neutral description of a child’s parents and in recognition of different types of families.” And who is to decide who Parent 1 is? Since this is the age of equality, I guess the ‘partners’ will have to put up their dukes and slug it out.

The author teaches at The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. He can be reached at supendran@gmail.com.

When I joined this noble profession, I was told by the veterans in the field that if I wished to survive as a teacher for any length of time, I needed to grow eyes on the back of my head, and fine-tune the already existing sixth sense. Like most teachers, I acquired in a matter of few years, the required super powers to survive the slings and arrows of outrageous students. My senses tingled à la Spiderman when mischief was afoot, and like Superman my super-hearing powers helped me detect the source of a careless whisper. I was the monarch of all that I surveyed; God was in his heaven, and all was right with the world! Or so I foolishly believed till some three years ago.

The classroom ceased to be my castle with the invasion of the cell phone. My lectures were frequently punctuated by the ringing of someone’s instrument, and the oft repeated mantra, ‘Please switch off your cell phone’, uttered before every class, failed to elicit the required response from the students. With the instruments becoming smaller, I found that I had to double my effort to stay half a step ahead of the students – not an easy thing to do considering the age difference between the teacher and the taught. I was frequently compelled to make quick dashes to different corners of the classroom to ensure that the students were not busy texting or playing some video game. Perhaps, if I had been an ardent user of the cell phone, it would have helped me bond with my students. But I loathe the instrument, and have contempt for all those who are a slave to it. The only thing that interests me about this wretched instrument is the number of words and expressions that it has given rise to over the years. They creep into conversations when you’re least expecting them, just like the ring of the thing itself.

“Where are you off to in such a hurry?”
“To the roof.”
“Wow, that’s a cool cell phone. What happened to the old one?”
“Went to cell phone heaven (1).”
“Listen, I’ve been texting you all morning. Why haven’t you replied?”
“I couldn’t! The phone was with the cell phone Nazi (2).”
“What happened?”
“She caught me texting in class and took….”
“Again? Why don’t you be a little more careful?”
“It wasn’t my fault, really. Was trying to cheer up Ravi. He said that he hasn’t had textual satisfaction (3) in over three days.”
“So while you were in class, you were trying to provide him textual satisfaction! You’re crazy, you know that?”
“Well the poor guy is down with a fever and I thought I’d cheer him up.”
“You don’t look so great yourself. Are you coming down with something?”
“I’m sure it’s just a mild case of cellphoneitus (4).”
“What about your phone? Has it had any cell phone constipation relief (5) yet?”
“Not yet. I’m going to the roof for that.”
“Before you go, are you coming for this evening’s party?”
“This evening? Are your sure? Your text said the 23 and not 22.”
‘Well, that must have been a slip of the thumb (6).
The party is today and I’d like ….”
“If it’s today, I can’t come.”
“But you have to come. It’s a long drive and I need a designated texter (7).”
“Why don’t you ask Ritu to be your designated texter?”
“She has the texter’s thumb (8). So, she isn’t….”
“How about Ramesh, then?”
“You must be joking. The guy is textually challenged (9).”
“I’m sorry, I can’t help. I’m going to the roof.”
“You might have to do the cell phone samba (10) while you are up there.”
“I know. I’m prepared.”

Glossary

1. Cell phone heaven: when one loses the instrument or seriously damages it that it cannot be repaired. A new instrument has to be bought.
2. Cell phone Nazi: a teacher who keeps telling students to switch off their cell phones.
3. Textual satisfaction: the feeling of happiness you get when you have a missed call or a new message.
4. Cellphoneitus: having gone without a cell phone for a long time.
5. Cell phone constipation relief: when your cell phone has been turned off for a long time, and when turned on begins to receive new messages, voice mails, and calls.
6. Slip of the thumb: mistake made while typing/sending a message.
7. Designated texter: someone who sits next to the driver and types in and sends all the messages that the driver wants him to.
8. Texter’s thumb: the callus that you develop on your thumbs due to excessive texting.
9. Textually challenged: one who finds it difficult to text and send messages.
10. Cell phone samba: the erratic movements a person makes in order to get a better signal.

The author teaches at The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. He can be reached at supendran@gmail.com.

February 14, a day synonymous with love and affection: love for that special someone who brings meaning into our lives, and affection for those who have the misfortune of being in our orbit and don’t seem to resent it as much as they should. It is a day regarded with mixed feelings by Indians. Some roll the date around the tongue as if they were sampling vintage port, while others spit it out with a sort of frigid distaste as if it soiled their lips. It is a day when the atmosphere is supposedly charged with love; a day when men and women remove the heart from the cobwebs, give it a spit and polish, and present it to their beloved. It is that time of the year when couples, old and new, reaffirm their affection for each other by exchanging tokens of love – a red rose, a heart shaped box of chocolate, and a card oozing with sentiment.

Yes, it is the day when love conquers everything, including common sense! Men, even the strong, silent type, in whose armour romance does not easily find a chink, often flip their lid and demean themselves by writing unreadable poetry. Who is this man Valentine who has plunged this world into a riot of emotions? No one is really certain. Some believe that he was a priest who lived in Rome in the third century. Apparently the Emperor of Rome, Claudius II, believed that single men made better soldiers than those who had tied the knot. To ensure that his army remained formidable and put the fear of god in the enemies, Claudius came up with a novel idea; he decided to outlaw marriage! Valentine, however, would have none of this; after all marriages were made in heaven. He believed that if young couples wished to plunge hot headedly into matrimony and spend the subsequent years in regret, then it was god’s will. So, instead of following the Emperor’s decree, Valentine decided to marry off the lovers in secret. When the king, whose IQ left much to be desired, became aware of the priest’s nefarious activities, he had his head chopped off. This is just one of the stories doing the rounds. Another legend has it that Valentine was a prisoner who fell like a ton of bricks for the jailor’s blind daughter. Apparently, he miraculously cured her of her blindness, and before he was executed, he is believed to have sent the girl the first official Valentine letter: he signed off on it with the immortal words, ‘Your Valentine’.

You may wonder why I’m writing about an event that takes place in February, a month later. I was informed by the wielder of the blue pencil that the cover story for March was about the importance of English in India. To understand this phenomenon, we need to look no further than the hoopla that surrounds Valentine’s Day. On February 14, the language used by people slightly soft in the head – self-proclaimed romantics – to declare their undying love for their beloved is (generally) English. It is the lingua franca; most of the messages that are sent or received on this day are in English. Valentine’s Day and English are inseparable.

How times have changed! In the past, when you wished to get married or your parents thought it was time for you to take the plunge, they did all the hard work. They poured through an odd assortment of horoscopes, shortlisted a few suitable candidates keeping in mind the family and educational background of the individual, and when the time was ripe, ambushed you with the terrible mug shot of various individuals whose faces might have easily found a home in Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors! Nowadays of course, members of the younger generation prefer to choose their own life partner, and the few that do go in for the traditional arranged marriage have a long list of desirable and essential qualifications that they expect their candidates to fulfil before they are shortlisted for the big interview. For the modern urban girl, it’s not enough if the ‘boy’ comes equipped with agreeable features, is well educated, earns a good salary, comes from a good family, knows his way around the kitchen, treats a woman as his equal, etc. She wants something more – she wants her Prince Charming to be fluent in English.

You may wonder why a man should demonstrate his ability to speak English well before a girl would consider being tied to him in bonds of holy matrimony. I talked to several urban girls in their early twenties about it, and this is what many had to say. According to Mala (all names are pseudonyms), a student doing her MPhil, girls gravitate towards men who speak eloquently, and speaking good English, in her opinion, is a definite “turn on”. Revathi, a writer for an online magazine agrees, and goes so far as to say that “a man who cannot speak English today is unattractive instantly”. If the girl finds the man’s English jarring to her ears, she is likely to park him unceremoniously in some obscure corner, and move on to the next candidate on the list. Geetha, another research student, says she would never consider marrying a man who speaks only his mother tongue; for her, this implies that he has never ventured outside his own state, and she prefers to be with people “who have studied outside their own state at least for some time.” Savithri, an editor in a publishing firm, echoes similar sentiments; she maintains that marrying a man who has never stepped out of his state is a “scary” thought. Introducing the ‘significant other’ to the members of one’s inner circle and getting their approval becomes easier if he is able to speak ‘propah’ English. Bhanu, an editor working in Baroda, says: “It would be a bit embarrassing when you introduce your guy to your friends and they start asking him questions in English and the guy keeps fumbling for words.” She wants her husband to be competent in English so that he can appreciate her jokes and her play on words. Revathi, the online journalist, does not see her husband as a decorative piece lying around the house, but as someone who will assist her in her work: “I would love to have a life partner who can comprehend, respond or challenge my work rather than someone who won’t push me to produce better articles that I write in the only language I know well.”

All this seems to suggest one thing. In the future, before a man pops the million dollar question, he must ask himself the billion dollar question – is my English good enough?

The author teaches at The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. He can be reached at supendran@gmail.com.

When we think of God, the image that we instantly conjure up is that of someone with a halo around his head, a delicious smile spreading across his compassionate face, the nectar of celestial kindness flowing through his veins, words of wisdom and encouragement gushing from his mouth…and so on and so forth. Hold that thought for a moment. An ancient Greek reading this would probably guffaw and respond thus:

“Dream on bro, dream on! You are cuckoo to think that God is all sugar and spice and all things that are nice. Let me tell you, we Greeks know our gods, and there is nothing sweet or nice about those whackos. Those loony tunes are as mean as they come. Don’t believe me? Just ask Prometheus and Tantalus.

“Never heard of Prometheus, eh? Well, let me fill you in. Now, this dude was a Titan, so he was kind of big made. In my language, ‘Prometheus’ means ‘fourthought’ – or is it spelt ‘forethought’? Who cares! This English language with its crazy spelling is as loony as the gods themselves. Anyway, as I was saying, this big fella Prometheus was floating around in heaven when for no reason at all he develops itchy feet. He picks up sticks and decants himself on earth to see how humans are doing. At that time, they weren’t doing very well coz the head honcho of the gods, Zeus, was making their life a real hell. He had taken fire away from them, so my ancestors were freezing their you- now-what off inside dark caves, eating basically sushi. When it came to eating, Prometheus had the reputation of licking his plate clean, but unlike the cave dwellers on earth, he liked his food well done. He wanted humans to sample cooked food. Now if you and I had been Prometheus, we would have probably ordered take out from one of the restaurants in heaven and given it to the ‘stinkapoos’ in the caves. Instead, the big fella with nothing inside his noodle, went to Mercury and asked: ‘Hey Merc, can you lend me fire?’ ‘What for bro?’ ‘I want to give it to mankind. You see….’ ‘Fire to mankind? Are you nuts? If Zeus comes to know about it, he’d kick me in the …..’ ‘The old blighter will never know. I won’t rat on you.’ ‘That ugly dude has hidden cameras installed everywhere. He sees everything.’

When Prometheus heard this, he hit his head with his mighty hand, and an idea dropped. He decided he was going to stick it to Zeus; he was going to steal fire. Now for someone named ‘forethought’, you might think that this was a pretty dumb thing to do. To cut a long story short, he managed to steal fire and give it to human beings. Soon there was fire raging in every cave, and people were eating cooked food. Camp fire songs became popular; ‘Come on baby, light my fire’ was the first song to climb to the top of the charts. Everything was hunky dory till Zeus got wind of what was happening. He went ballistic when he heard what Prometheus had done. He grabbed hold of the ample specimen and chained him to a rock. He whistled for a humongous eagle from somewhere and ordered it to eat Prometheus’ liver. With the eagle ripping out his insides to get at the liver, Prometheus did what any chained man would – no, he did not pray, he merely screamed. The Titan’s scream deafened the eagle partially in one ear, but it continued with its job, and in a matter of few hours had consumed the giant liver. You would think that would be the end of the story, but the bloodthirsty Zeus wasn’t done yet. He had it in for Prometheus, and was going to make him undergo the mother of all suffering.

‘Listen to me bozo, and listen to me good’, belched Zeus. ‘If you think I’m going to put you out of your misery, think again. You are going to be stinking up this place for eternity. Every day, this giant eagle will visit you, tear up your innards and eat your liver. He will spend the whole day doing it. Come night time, your liver will grow back again, and the next morning the eagle will return again.’

‘Nooooooo!’ The cry came not from the fire stealer, but the eagle. ‘Oh mighty Zeus, you’ve got to be kidding me. There’s no way I can eat this guy’s liver every day for eternity man. I almost puked the first time around. Can I send substitutes?’

The mighty Zeus said yes, and the eagle flew away happily. Prometheus, on the other hand, was an unhappy camper. He continued to be chained to the rock, and the eagle and his distant relatives visited him every day to feast on his unending supply of liver.

This wasn’t the first time that the Mad Hatter from Mount Olympus punished lesser mortals in this inhuman manner. Tantalus, one of the many sons of Zeus, suffered a similar fate. It so happened that once Tantalus had invited all the gods for lunch. Tantalus, like his father, was as crazy as a peach-orchard boar. For the main course, Loony Tune No: 2 served them his own son. He had chopped him up into tiny pieces and mixed him in the stew meant for the gods. Most of the celestial guests sensed that there was something and did not touch the main course. When Zeus was told what his son had done, he flipped his lid; he killed Tantalus and condemned his soul to the underworld. There, as a form of punishment, he was made to stand in knee deep water, with delicious fruit hanging over his head. But every time Tantalus felt hungry and reached for the fruit, the branch went out of reach. And every time he was overcome by thirst and stooped down to drink, the water level receded. No matter how hungry or thirsty he became, he was condemned never to taste the fruit or drink the water.

The King of the Gods did this to his own son. Now do you believe me when I say that the gods are a mean bunch? Oh by the way, it is from Tantalus that we get the word ‘tantalize’.

The author teaches at The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. He can be reached at supendran@gmail.com.