In the world of profanities, there is a class divide

I have a confession to make. I use profanity when I speak, when I write (I never use profanity here in this space, though, as you shall soon discover, this entire piece is about profanity), when I think and sometimes when I dream. I like using profanity. I can shoot expletives faster than anyone I know. And I do not want to talk about my relationship with the expletive lexicon any more than this.

While this piece is about profanity, it isn’t as much an exploration into my relationship with the profane lexicon as it is a meditation on the intense spell of perplexity I am under for the last week or so.

What happened was that while talking to a friend over a round of drinks, having a conversation about nothing in particular, least of all the psychology of profanity, I made, in the words of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a discovery with the clarity of a revelation: Foul language in English is not considered foul by a large section of the Indian youth. It is a symbol of social progress. As a consequence, Hindi or desi expletives are a symbol of backwardness, rural mindedness, a rapist mentality and everything that comes in the way of our economic progress.

The problem opened a can of worms. How come I never saw this before? Now that I thought of it, I found my memory littered with evidence in my favour. Often I would find myself abusing myself in the mirror first in English, then in Hindi, then in Punjabi and then in Bengali and observing if I felt differently when abused in a different language. This was followed by a similar psychological experiment involving the telephone and a few unsuspecting friends.

I can write an entire book on what went through my head but I am not sure if you’ll buy it. Let us suffice with a few notes.

1) The difference between the English and the desi expletive isn’t one of category but one of degree.

2) Abusive language in English is not just tolerated but encouraged in conference rooms and often goes to show the drive and determination of the user of such words especially when the user uses the words to describe how the user plans on dealing with competition or rivals. To four-letter someone or to be four-lettered by someone is a smooth way of categorizing the events that shape our careers and love lives. Hindi expletives, even in informal gatherings, give an unpleasant sensations to the ears, as if one has heard something in a social space that one should not, like the sound of flatulence.

3) It is easy to see why Indian women should prefer using English bad language to our native school of insults. Western insults are in a sense ‘post gender’ which gives women a choice over insults that essentially objectify women and can only be directed at men if they are supposed to stay true to their meaning. A woman insulting another woman by insinuating an incestuous relationship with either her sister or her mother is most likely to confound the victim of abuse rather than leave them insulted or hurt or both. 

Hindi or English, expletives work on me the same way they do for everyone. The profane brings out the profound when the mind is too overpowered by shock, awe anger, desire or despair. Till last week I had never thought about it and perhaps I will forget all about it by this time next year but as of now, in this moment, I am immersed in an ocean of perplexity.

The author is a writer.