The problem with D K Bose

WHAT SURTIS SWEAR BY

I don’t know about you but I certainly do not happen to find any fun in the pun within the crude Hindi slang used for female genitalia, which forms the lyrics of a present popular song. It makes me cringe and reach out for a pair of noise canceling ear muffs - Quiet Comfort by Bose.

While Dada Kondke had named his movie after a similar pun in the 1900’s, it was considered C grade cinema, one meant for an audience of the same category. It certainly wasn’t in a catchy song form that would be played day in and night out on the radio or in movie trailers which would be run during intervals in theatres through the country,or conveniently slotted between prime time programmes on national television and replayed in between news streams.The 'A' certificate for the cinema means nothing when you are already bantering around whats banned for younger ears .

‘What’s new?’ you may question, ’aren’t we Surtis surrounded by profanity? ‘Yes, but till this date we did not have backpack toting toddlers singing it out loud, did we?

Author John Mc Whorter who penned ‘The Power of Babel’ once pointed out that,’Young children will memorize the illicit inventory long before they can grasp its sense.’ The scurrilous jest in Delhi Belly literally justifies the existence of potty mouths.

An entertainment licensee cannot justify the exploitation of profanity amongst the youth to set cash counters jingling. An ‘A’ certificate will not stop children from smaller towns like Surat casually sauntering in to catch the film at the nearest theatre screening the same.That exactly,Ms Kiran Rao ,is what's wrong with D K Bose and such other theories. Even as an audience cheers out loud and claps to the usage of brazenly vulgar words, young minds are easily influenced in repeating what they think is a ‘kewl conversation.’ Remember, Kareena Kapoor in so called family entertainers like ‘Jab We Met’ and ‘Golmaal’ got max audience appreciation for scenes in which she let her mouth loose with incomplete expletives.

Subjected to foul language that is not alien to them in day to day life, teenagers have interpreted slang to suit their expressions. A normal text SMS amongst teens these days will have words like ‘meri maar di’, ’fatt gayee’,’thok diya’, ‘uski bajaa di’,’vaat laga di” along with much abused four letter English words, very casually compiled within sentences .Where has this cult come from ? Is it just the movies?

Surtis swear by profanity and it is an integral part of their trading language. Migrants are often aghast at how smoothly a sentence flows from the mouths of Surti lalas, laced along with unmentionable body parts. Both happiness and anger alike are expressed with incestuous remarks with strong hints of Freud’s theory of an Oedipus complex.

While Surat’s Ghachis, Golas, Khatris, Kolis, Parsis are known for the sharp tongued sputter of their gutter tongue, the origin of these words are not essentially Gujarati. Upon carefully noticing the word formation of regularly used cuss words which are coarsely audacious, you will discover that their origin is from various languages like Arabic, Persian, and Hindustani, presumably brought into the ancient port town by the traders who sailed in. Speaking of whom, did the Brits bring in along with colonial rule, gross language too?

Queen Elizabeth I was speculated to be a robust swearer. The evolution of profanity in the English language is cited by scholars as somewhere around the 16th century. The word Profane has Latin roots and it means ‘outside of the church’, hence blasphemous. In fact well known authors like Geoffrey Chaucer in Canterbury Tales and world’s most popular playwright William Shakespeare are known to have widely used religious and moral curses within their texts (which were often censored). They were words like ‘God’s blessing on your beard’ from Love’s labour lost, or ‘By God’s (blest) mother’ from Henry.

The word ‘ass’ was first published as a swear word in the Oxford English Dictionary way back in 1955 and since then, vituperative words seem to have had no looking back, so to say.

What’s sad to hear is one of the most offensive cuss words around the world being touted as a youth anthem in our nation, in the name of being a trendy laugh! Now ,that certainly is not funny.