The Devil's Dictionary

I first came across Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's dictionary when I was in high school, and it has never ceased to enthrall with its wicked wit. Here, for instance, are three of Bierce's idiosyncratic definitions:

Beggar: One who has relied on the assistance of friends.

Cannon: An instrument used for the rectification of national boundaries.

Belladonna: In Italian, a beautiful lady; in English, a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential similarity of the two languages.

And if you think that Bierce was petty enough to be a misogynist, here's another:

Brute: see Husband.

Inglis as she is spoked...

I was recently reading the blog of a (now very common type of) smart aleck who was lecturing the world about how English is such a wonderfully fluid and flexible language, how its real charm lies in the way users keep on modifying it 'creatively', and how those who insist on some standards are pitiable stick in the muds at best, and no better than racists or sexists at worst.

Now I have written about this tendency before – this inability to believe that there can be standards higher than one’s own, this innate inability to respect people who are better than oneself (which might persuade one to try and become slowly better at doing things; that’s the only way people can improve – whether it is at math or music or cooking or anything else), this pride in semi-literacy and justifying one’s incompetence at expressing oneself well with the argument that anything goes, after all, as long as one can somehow get one’s thoughts across (you can check previous posts here, such as Indlish, Job application goof-ups and many more). What does it matter if I write 'grass eats cow' instead of  'a cow eats grass', really (what does it matter if instead of eating off a clean plate I use one on which the cat has just relieved itself)?

The effect of this pernicious (and increasingly popular, naturally, in an age when anything that requires talent, mental discipline and sustained effort is anathema, an age when Mozart and Lady Gaga can be called musicians in the same breath) doctrine is that people expect to get away with anything at all. A student writing ‘Portia had a wonderful father who wanted to marry her even after his death’ expects so, the teacher who says ‘I have two daughters and both are girls’ does so, the restaurant manager who writes a sign saying ‘The water in this restaurant has been personally passed by the manager’ does so, the barman who warns in a notice that ‘Ladies are advised not to have children in the bar’ does so, the leave applicant at the office who writes ‘My wife is ill and I am the only husband at home’ does so, the tourist who exults over how cheap the ‘fooding’ is in the hotel he has found does so, the idiot who writes Jibananda Das when he means Jibanananda Das on his blog and does not notice the mistake in a whole year does so…I remember William Safire the famous American newspaper columnist sighing that there was a time when Americans could speak instead of snorting and grunting like cave-men and worse. And it is that breed of American (I know many who are better) who are spreading the virus of linguistic philistinism worldwide, among all those who identify the worst of everything American with ‘smartness’ and modernity (it's cool to wear shorts of the kind that keep half your backside open to public view...)

The fact that most ‘educated’ people these days are illiterate except when they are dealing with numbers, that most PhDs and MBAs would swoon if I gave them a comprehension exercise from P.G. Wodehouse, does not automatically give them a right to impose their illiteracy upon those who know better. And to those who claim that ‘everybody’ is doing it, my retort is that you don’t know everybody; try consorting with your betters rather than your peers. Finally, I am not  stuck in the days of Shakespeare or John Ruskin: even among the best and most successful  contemporary writers, grammar, spelling, syntax,  idiom and careful choice of words are just as sacrosanct as ever – as you could check out with J.K. Rowling, Jeffrey Archer, Stephen King, John le Carre, John Grisham, or even Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth and Jhumpa Lahiri.

But that is, of course, only if you can do something as hard and ‘boring’ as reading books… I forget myself! Of course most educated people deal only with the likes of Chinamen selling umbrellas and electronic toys, and therefore need no more English than is required to compose blurbs on packaging cartons (ever read that kind of 'English'?)

And by the way, I direct the same sneer at all those Bengalis who cannot speak or write three successive whole sentences in chaste Bangla without lapsing into English or Hindi slang. In West Bengal, at least, that accounts for 998 ‘educated’ folks out of every thousand now. They say 'ami car-ta niye season flower shopping korte jachchhi', and are very proud of it. Anyways, they're absolutely awsum, lol! (OMG, wasn't that the coolest line I writed here, dude?)

Did I tell you about my new gizmo/junket?

My good young friend Sumitha had once written to me via email about why she hates so-called social networking sites: most people, she said, merely put up all kinds of pictures and drop all kinds of names just to draw attention desperately to themselves: look, I have been there, done that, I hobnob with so many big noises, and so forth. It disgusts me too, and I have seen the same tendency on people’s blogs, and even in emails they send to me: they are not in the least interested in other people, they only want to talk about themselves and their piddling ‘achievements’ and acquisitions. We were brought up in an ambience where we were told only crass and ‘uneducated’ people do that sort of thing: now it’s spread like an epidemic. It isn’t civilized to talk about such things; it’s best not to mention them at all unless absolutely necessary in the context. It only tells others you suffer from great insecurity combined with a bloated ego, and if you are ‘admired’ for that, it’s only by people who are just as crass and silly as you are (Ooh, she’s got a chauffeur/ a new laptop/ a new hairdo!).

Of course there are people about whose travels and houses and cars and wines I love to hear – but that’s not only because they are close friends but I know that showing off is the last thing on their minds; all they want is to share with me the kind of stories I like to hear. Alas, their numbers are pitifully small.

And then there are people who are so dull that it never occurs to them that their vaunting may sound offensive and stupid: when it is pointed out to them, they privately take offence, and sometimes get back to you with lame apologies – ‘That’s not what I meant…’ Why on earth don’t people reflect a bit about how others might react to what they say before saying it?

Fast life

I normally pay all my bills within a few days of receiving them, but last month, through an oversight, the phone bill was forgotten till almost the last moment. The 29th of the month is apparently the last date for paying this sort of bill without a fine. The payment office is virtually next door, so I dropped in twice, on the mornings of both the 28th and 29th, and came away scared by the long queues - it would have entailed standing for an hour at least. 

This morning I went again, and there was nobody else, so it took me less than a minute to get the job done. The price - a fine of ten rupees.

There are so many hundreds of people around who can both afford to and are quite comfortable with standing in long queues for hours on end so that they might not have to pay ten rupees extra. These people are all more than well-off, it goes without saying - the ruling party calls this a rich man's neighbourhood! - and they all sing in chorus at the appropriate places about how terribly busy they are, what a fast life this has become...