Mind your language!

Shilpa Shetty was allegedly called a pig in Big Brother. The world seems to be in great difficulty because of that. It’s front page news! There are 20 odd talk shows discussing the nature of reality shows like Big Brother and its Indian cousin Big Boss, and how racism is still there! Now, I don’t want to discuss the same thing. I think they are over doing it anyway. There is a reason it’s called a “show”. Let it remain that… don’t make a show of that.

My concern, as a keen observer of different culture and English language, is the choice of abusive words in different countries.

Calling someone pig, it seems, has lost its favor among Indians. When I was young, I mean really young, “bloody swine”, used to be an elite english gaali! How refined our language was – no pig, no boar, no hog, but swine! If one doesn’t know the meaning of it, it sounds so sweet, with a swaying tone. Did you notice it rhymes with wine?

Now, however, “dog” is the abusive word of choice. Now, the range of emotions that can be portrayed with the term “Dog”, is unbelievable. Right from describing gluttony (Kutto ki tarah khaya), to talking about someone behind his / her back (Bitching!), it can really be used anywhere. Even when greeting someone. Some of my “Yo” friends, inspired by 20,000 odd rappers (with ludicrous names like Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, 50 cents and Ludacris), have started greeting each other with “Wassup dog?”! Bad influence I say.

The other factor in this pig vs dog war, according to me, is film stars. Now we all know how movie stars swear in movies. Take the example of an iconic hindi movie - Sholay! Both the dog and pig are prominent in the dialogues. But, with all due respect to late Mr. Amjad Khan, his “suaar ke bachho” was pale in front of Mr. Dharmendra’s “kutte, kamine…”. More importantly, Mr. Dharmendra has repeated his dialogue often in many movies, and managed to teach Indians their most important gaali. In training, we call this reinforce technique.

There is this other factor, which struck me. There could be a cultural thingy here. Indians, contrary to what Ms. Jade “Goody two shoes” thinks, are very respectful to what they eat. We don’t prefer to use those that we eat as abusive words. Earlier, we never ate pigs. Now that we have started eating (at least in urban India), we stopped using “pig”. In western culture, this appreciation for food seems to lack. They call people “chicken” and “pig”! Of course, even in India, exceptions to this exist (one prominent example is where people of India call Inzamam Ul Haq – “Aloo”). We should treat this as affection though.

Anyway, enough of this stuff. You go back to whatever you were doing; let Ms. Shetty enjoy the Rs. 3,00,00,000/- that she reportedly got for all those “horrible” things that were told to her; let Endemol (the creators of Big Brother) enjoy all the hype and increased viewership; let Ms. Goody enjoy the trip to India proposed by Indian tourism department; let the media find some real story for a change; and finally, let there be peace on earth. Amen!