I remember being in complete sympathy with an article I once read about meaningless and infuriating terms that infested the media, most of them originating in the business world. That particular term was, if I recall right, “grabbing eyeballs” for “attracting viewers”.  The very infelicity of the term made me wince the first time I heard it. I ask you – would you rather watch something, or have your eyeball grabbed?

Over time, I find, eyeball-grabbing has tended to fade away from the pages and for a (very short) while there temporary dearth of obnoxious terms (apart from “Indian culture”, a perennial detestation of mine) that set my teeth on edge (and imagine how having one’s teeth on edge affects a dentist, while you’re about it). But now, I increasingly see another of those words that make me want, in Hermann Goering’s words, “to reach for my pistol”.

Footfall.

Why the f*ck can’t these people say visitors, or customers, if they’re going to write anything at all? What the hell does it mean if they say “this mall has a footfall of twenty thousand a day”? Does it mean 20,000 individual feet tread in the damn building? Since most people have two feet, that means ten thousand people, doesn’t it? Or, hang on, do they mean feet touch the ground twenty thousand times a day in that mall, which is what it sounds like to me? That could mean just one guy walking up and down, up and down from morning to night.  I don't suppose they mean the medical term called foot drop, do you?

I don’t suppose footfall will last any longer than grabbing eyeballs. But once it goes, I wonder what other meaningless term some vainglorious idiot will inflict on us.        

Recently I read several articles, in quick succession, talking of how languages were becoming extinct at a faster rate than plants and animals. The reasons were the usual – dwindling numbers of speakers of esoteric tongues, not because of actual physical extinction of demographic  groups, though that still happens (albeit rarely) – the greatest reason was the fact that dominant languages swamp the original ones and people no longer teach their children languages that will have no educational or employment benefit.

Of course, a language isn’t just the words – there is an entire culture bound up in a language, and when the language is gone, the culture is gone. So there is a need (or so they say) to preserve the language, in whatever form.

Of course, if there are still a few speakers left, you might be able to record their speech and store it in CDs or on tape, but as anyone knows words alone don’t give life to a language. And you can’t exactly force people to learn a language, can you? Or to force them to teach it to their children?

OK, from where I’m standing, it makes complete sense for me to abandon my natal language, Bengali, in favour of English and Hindi. Bengali is fundamentally useless as a language for any but social purposes if one lives outside Bengal, even though it has millions of speakers. It’s a complete dead end to learn it – my parents forced me, against my express wishes, to waste much of the ten years of my school life learning to write essays and so on in a language I never, ever read or write any more these days (I have to think even to remember how to form the script) and which I speak much less than a third of the time.

These days, schools in these parts have realised the valuelessness of languages like Bengali and Assamese and have junked them in favour of Hindi – thus doing their pupils a considerable service, because knowledge of Hindi will prepare them for the real world (my Hindi is self-taught and I’m virtually illiterate in the language, sad to say, and could never have landed a job in a Hindi-speaking state). The parents no longer have the chance to force their children to learn dead-end languages. It’s a process that’s pretty well irreversible. Why should children learn dead or dying languages? Who has the time or the desire?

Now this is happening to languages with millions of speakers – imagine the plight of the tiny languages, with maybe ten or a hundred fluent speakers. They’re doomed – beyond salvage, and, really, maybe it’s just as well.

I foresee a time when all of us will speak one or more of a tiny handful of languages – maybe English, French, Mandarin, Russian, Hindi, Arabic, Spanish, and a couple of others…and far from this leaving us poorer, it’s going to increase understanding between peoples.

And we can build the Tower of Babel again, but a better one this time.

“Political correctness” or whatever you want to call it, it’s gone well beyond the point where I could say it was just getting on my nerves.

Today I saw, for instance, a hearse with SYMPATHY VAN written in large letters on its side. What the hell is a sympathy van? Something one comes in to offer sympathy? A hearse, or mortuary van as it’s generally called in these parts, is a functional vehicle. Back in Lucknow they used to call it exactly what it was – Laash ke Vaste (“For corpses”). Maybe that’s a bit too functional for some people (who should in any case have other things to think about than what the vehicle conveying the departed’s body is called) but from where I’m standing I could do with a little less weaselling, please.

Here in North East India, if you take a look at the driver’s door of any interstate bus, you’ll find stencilled on it, in flowing script, Pilot. The rationale, if you can call it that, behind this, is that bus drivers feel slighted to be called drivers and they want job cachet. Pilots fly planes, don’t they? And they carry passengers, don’t they? So, why should people who convey passengers on buses be any lesser than airline pilots?

Now, of course, these people don’t know the origin of the word pilot is the steersman of a boat. Nor, I suspect, would they care, however silly it sounds. And when I drive a car, I don’t mind being called a driver, not that I know of anyone else who is, either.

OK, while I am on the subject, I was fat. I was obese. I was not healthy (the Indian euphemism) or horizontally challenged, what ever that might be when it’s at home. Also, I’m partially deaf. I’m not acoustically challenged, and I can’t sing – I’m not, for heaven’s sake, vocally challenged or whatever. I just cannot carry a damn tune.

Oh, and don’t the beauty contest finalists just charm you with their politically correct desire to cure world hunger and work for the poor and underprivileged? Most so when you know all along they’ll fall over themselves joining movies and modelling agencies the first chance they get?

Political correctness breeds euphemisms, and both should be hanged by the neck until dead before dishwashers get officially designated “underwater ceramics engineers”.       

Remember Ashanti? After her debut album, Ashanti, was released, she said something along these lines: “I know in Indian, Ashanti means war.”

OK, “In Indian”? I laughed then. But I thought a bit about it and I’m not sure about it now. There are many Indian languages, but there are so many violent things they’ve done to the English language between them that – I submit – there is a new language called Indian, all right.

This language takes English words and gives them all new meanings, some of which have never been dreamt of before…

Let me try a few examples. This is far from a complete list, and those who can are welcome to add more to this little glossary (of course this is a generalisation, and any individual might be able to claim he/she does not do any such thing. But as a generalisation, it holds):

A billion people’s expectations: See below, “National Religion.”

Amreeka: If you are a North Indian, this means any place abroad, anywhere in the world, except Pakistan (of which see below).

Arranged marriage.: the usual Indian marriage. What you should think whenever you hear the word “marriage”. In the average “arranged marriage” the bride and groom have either never met or met very seldom under strictly supervised circumstances. Usually associated with “early decent marriage” (see below).

Big B: A conniving, political, has-been movie actor and failed politician now using his connections to illegally acquire farm land.

Bollywood: The Hindi film industry. If you watch this you will believe that there is just one type of Indian who behaves in just one way. You will also believe that all Indians spend much of their time sitting in temples swaying from side to side and clapping their hands in a most bizarre fashion, while they aren’t singing at each other in Switzerland.

Boy/girl: Any unmarried person, even if fifty years of age, in the language of matrimonial ads.

Bribe: the oil that lubricates everything in India, in the public or private sector. The only way things get done around here.

Caste: Something that divides the “mainstream” Indian, especially in the North and South, into almost different species who either do not interact or do so in conditions that require then to behave as if they belong to different species.

Child marriage: The usual North Indian rural practice of getting children “married” to each other well before they reach puberty.

Compromise: What the police generally force poor people at the receiving end of criminal activity at the hands of their social superiors to do. Also used by police as a synonym for forcing women who have been raped to drop all charges in return for a token “compensation” or for marrying the rapist, even if he should be already legally married. 

Convent educated: Educated in any institution where the English language is the medium of instruction. Usually not a convent or anything to do with a convent.

Corruption: It no longer exists. When everyone is on the take, there is no such thing as “corruption” any longer.

Cricket: See below, “national religion”.

Democracy: What Indians love to pretend they have. Usually associated with the term “Largest democracy” and is a synonym for licensing a particular set of politicians to loot us for the next several years. 

Dowry: See “early decent marriage.” Also called “tradition.”

Dowry Death: Murder of one’s bride or one’s son’s bride so as to get one’s revenge for inadequate dowry.

Dynasty: The process of putting one’s offspring in charge of the family business. See below, “Political Party”.

Early Decent Marriage: In matrimonial advertisements, this is a code for “willing to pay dowry” or “ready to pay any amount to get my daughter off my hands.”

Election: The process of selecting a new set of criminals to rule the people for the next term, theoretically of five years but rarely so in practice.

Encounter: The process of being murdered by the police or army in illegal extrajudicial shootings, after which you are proclaimed to have been either a terrorist or having been “caught in a crossfire.” Also used as a verb, e.g. “He was encountered.”

Eve Teasing: Harrassment of a woman or girl. Something boys do. Utterly understandable. Boys will be boys.

Fellow: The second-to-ultimate abuse in South Indian English, e.g. “You useless fellow”.

Foreign Policy: Kowtowing to America by reflex action.

Fukker: The ultimate abuse in South Indian English.

Gandhi (Mahatma): Some half-naked bald old man who lived some years back and whose birthday is a holiday, so he has been of some use, right?

Gandhi (Rahul): The king-in-waiting.

Gandhi (Sonia) : The dowager Queen of the realm.

Gujarat: Any place where you can rape and murder Muslims with impunity.

Hindi: A language to be forced down everyone’s throat, no matter that less than half the populace speaks it with any degree of fluency, and no matter that outside North India it is an alien tongue.

Hockey: Theoretically the national sport. In reality totally neglected and overlooked, despite the performance of the players, who are actually doing pretty well despite all constraints, but who had to go on a hunger strike recently to get their dues. 

India: A place at the centre of the universe comprising (if you’re North Indian) the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana and Punjab. Somewhere in the south there is something called Madras and someplace in the South West it’s all Bambai.

Indian culture: The standard cover-all excuse when you want to destroy and ravage whatever you want, paintings, statues, museums not excluded. Everything, but everything, is against Indian culture, except dowry deaths and child marriage (see above).

India Shining: “I’ve got mine, Jack, get your hands off my stack.” See “Middle Class”.

Kashmir: Something no one knows anything about but no one is willing to relinquish at any cost – so long as it’s someone else paying the cost. The Kashmiris, for instance.

Left: The communist political parties. A bunch of traitors, since they think the country should have an independent foreign policy, should care for poor people, and should try for a measure of social harmony.

Love marriage: As opposed to "arranged marriage". What in any other part of the world (except parts of the Islamic world) would be simply "marriage". Something against Indian Culture (see above) and liable to get one into an Honour Killing (no need to define that one).

Little Master: A podgy, over-the-hill cricket player (see “National Religion”) who refuses to retire and goes on and on and on.

London : (19^th century usage - now obsolete) If you’re a Bengali, any place abroad, anywhere.

Madras: To the North Indian, anywhere in South India.

Middle Class: An utterly self-absorbed, overconsuming branch of society who would, in the words of an old American song, “pour water on a drowning man” – if they could be bothered to notice him in the first place.  

Morals: What one has to invoke as a back-up to “Indian culture” when one wants to force people to think or act as one wants them to.

Muslims: A national fifth column of pampered, parasitic, overbreeding traitors all of whom have four wives and twenty children. Never mind if they have no education or jobs. They’re still pampered. See “pseudo-secularism”.

National Religion: A colonial pseudo-sport named “cricket” which most people, none of whom know anything of how to actually play it, take as a substitute for war. A vehicle for jingoism. Also check “World Champions” and “Team India”.

North East India: A place that doesn’t exist, peopled by Chinese who are always rebelling and/or sleeping around.

Nuclear Deal: Something that absolutely cannot, must not, be discussed properly. Any doubts at all on this deal marks one as a member of the Left (see above).

Pakistan: Citizens of a Satanic entity intent on destroying everything Indian. All Muslims are, under the skin, Pakistanis, ya bettuh believe it.

Political Party: Except for the Left, a family run business that exists for the sole purpose of looting the public exchequer after winning elections (see above).

Prime Minister: A whiny voiced blue turbaned flunky whose only function is to simper at George W Bush and keep the seat warm for the king-in-waiting.

Pseudo-secularism: What you are guilty of if you think minorities like Muslims and Christians should be treated at par with Hindus.

Railway: It’s one of the biggest networks in the world, so (as one ad used to proudly proclaim on TV in the eighties) why on earth should it be safe and clean and punctual as well? Huh? Huh?

Serial : Synonym for “soap”. Endless episodes from the Ekta Kapoor production house featuring garishly coloured women eternally plotting against each other in mansions decorated by someone colour blind.

Sex: Another of those things that don't exist in India. A contaminant from abroad, associated with such evils as sex education.

Team India: A nonexistent entity, according to the judgement of the supreme court. More correctly known as the BCCI XI. A private cricket team selected by a private club, the Board for the Control of Cricket in India.  

Television: Completely dumbed down opium of the masses; a living proof of what Karl Marx said.

Terrorist: Any Muslim who doesn't knuckle under when told to.

Virgin: What every Indian woman is, even if she is married and the mother of ten.

Wheatish Complexion: Dark. What the matrimonial ads don't want to say out loud.

World Champions: The BCCI XI, after having won something called the Twenty-20 World Championship in which ten or so countries took part, many with second string teams.

Any more contributions will be appreciated:)

One of my favourite memories dates back to mid-2001, while the Taliban still ruled in Kabul. A Western reporter (maybe from Newsweek, I don’t recall which magazine now, but it was a male, of course) was in Afghanistan. He was being escorted around by a young Talib, a mullah. I also – most unfortunately – don’t recall this Talib’s name (I don’t have an eidetic memory) but I do recall that he knew the Koran by rote.

What was so odd about him knowing the Koran by rote? Well, he was an Afghan and he knew it in Arabic. And so what?  According to the reporter, Mullah X didn’t actually speak or understand Arabic. He just knew the sounds.

Another of my favourite memories dates back a decade to a Hindu wedding I attended where the chants, prayers etc were (as almost always in Hindu ceremonies) in Sanskrit, a language almost nobody speaks any more. To people like me, it was all a succession of incomprehensible words ending with –ong and –ing and –ashya, so I’m not exactly in the position to criticise. But…according to those in the know, even the priest was getting the words wrong. So what? He was a priest, for dang’s sake, so the things were all OK. Bleh.

I wonder why the official hierarchy (barring some splinter groups each time) of so many religions (an exception was Buddhism, which insisted at the outset on the local language for religious instruction, but which has degenerated in turn) so often want to hide behind dead languages and incomprehensible verbiage. Is it something like the alchemists’ old symbols, something to inculcate a sense of mystery, or is it simply to camouflage the fact that what they’re saying doesn’t make very much sense?

In that way, at least, Christianity does relatively well (or it has since Vatican Second). Agree with the sermon or scoff at it, when you attend a Christian service you know what’s going on. The priest delivers it in the local language or English…most of the time. Unless you’re of the order of Mel Gibson, who refuses to admit that any language but Latin could do for church services. But then anything Mel the Nazi says is automatically suspect in my eyes. And it’s especially hilarious because it’s not as if Jesus, if he existed, would have preached in Latin either, as if he, the probably illiterate son of a rural carpenter, would even have known the language. Not even the average Roman in West Asia in those days spoke Latin. It was all Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek. But throughout centuries, the Church stuck to Latin and only finally decided English and other languages were acceptable as late as the 1960s. And now I hear Benedict wants to turn the clock back. With falling church attendance and declining religiosity, he wants to return to Latin. A death wish, is it?

Roll on Latin, Sanskrit, and Arabic, then.

(Incidentally, the Buddhist chant "Om mane  padme hum" means "the jewel (ie the phallus) is in the lotus (ie the vagina)" - something I don't think most Buddhists know.)