Language, identity and fears
Every year, I aim to become a better person and by that, I mean someone who understands the pain and tribulations of being a mosquito in this cruel bloody world. And every year, I fail as I qawali my way through the evening. I fucking hate mosquitoes. As I am typing this blog post at my table, one of their clan members is having a field day on my bare feet. Unless you are a practising Jain, it’s almost impossible to empathize with this insect’s hunger (or existence). One way of looking at it is to sketch a van Gogh level imagery. Ready for this? Cool. Maybe, just maybe, the mosquitoes like to think of themselves as honeybees and pretend that humans are flowers. OK, let me make it better for you. They are here not for your blood but for your nectar. Sounds great, right? Exactly. Life is all about clueless perception and clueful tomfoolery.
As far as social divisions go, no two entities draw polarized views as dogs and cats. Those who love dogs also tend to be those who aren’t very fond of cats. Those who love cats also tend to be those who don’t really care about dogs. Very rarely do you see a converging middle ground. The reason is simple: dogs and cats don’t get along very well and thus the pet-lovers don’t feel the need to get along with the other party. A dog, by evolutionary persuasions, can be the epitome of selfless love whereas a cat, by sheer nature, won’t give a damn. The former attracts attention, the latter dispels it. I grew up with cats in a Bombay chawl and I don’t remember an instance where any of the cats — we had over close to 10 at one point of time — ever demanded affection; so much so when dogs attacked one of them, she simply dragged herself to the house and laid down under the cupboard. Hardly any noise. In my 30s, I am growing old with a weary dog and I am becoming more and more certain that dogs can’t do without PDA. Just having it doesn’t work; you’ll have to show it to them. If I ignore Ranga for a few hours, he’ll walk up to me and expect me to touch his head once. That’s all. It’s incredible how these two domesticated animals have woven themselves into the fabric of our society.
I found it interesting that dogs are mentioned 44 times in the Bible whereas cats aren’t mentioned even once. If you were to interview a dog about this trivia, he’ll be jumping up and down while wagging his tail like a turbine. But if you were to reveal this embarrassing oversight to a cat, she will roll her eyes as if to suggest — “Don’t care but that book sucks!” Through the veins of history, one can clearly judge how important dogs and cats were to our progress. Not only dogs were the first domesticated being — they have been with us for over 15,000 years now — but also stayed integral to our stories. None of the cultures across the globe are devoid of dog’s touch. No, not even Islam. Nowadays, there might be a cynophobic lens to the world’s fastest growing religion but the earliest converts were the Bedouin tribe and dogs remained their faithful companions through and through. Similarly, cats were everywhere as well. If not, cat per se, then somebody from the cat’s family. In Egypt, cats were so popular that they enjoyed divine status. In the Battle of Pelusium (525 BC), the Persians used cats as shields knowing very well that Egyptians were forbidden from killing cats. That was then. As of now, the Internet is a fertile ground for figuring out which side the coin falls: there are cat lovers as well as dog lovers who can’t keep themselves from reminding the world how irresistibly cute their chosen pets are.
Since 2016, perhaps the year we accepted that we are officially in doom, there have been several articles probing a macabre question: how long before your pet (cat or dog) starts gnawing at you after your demise? There are many theories here but none with solid evidential approach. Almost all the hypotheses nod to a dog’s restraint in consuming his master while the internet doesn’t seem very kind to a cat’s appetite. The dank adherents even joke that a dog will stop you from committing suicide whereas a cat can’t wait for you to die. But then extreme humour can be injurious to common sense. For all we know, a dog would wait longer before sinking his teeth because he can physically do so. A cat, given its sensitive digestive system, may not even bother to touch the cadaver. After all, these are speculations of the highest order. There are no scientific studies in place to adjudge accurately. My contribution to this debate is we favour dogs because we are more genetically similar to cats than we are to dogs. Familiarity breeds contempt. And corpses.
It’s the age of fear. If you aren’t scared, you are scaring somebody else. That’s the ground rule now. Phobia, phobia, everywhere, not a fear to spare. As a result, almost every side tried really hard to claim victimhood: that I was wronged and you ought to listen to me first even if I have wronged others and don’t have the capacity to listen to others. In all probability, it’s a modern phenomenon. Which mostly leads to vacuous situations with ridiculous claims. For instance, I wasn’t sacked because I was bad at XYZ; I was sacked because I am ABC, so let’s focus on ABC and ignore XYZ. I am a victim, remember? The problem with this self-fulfilling technique is it deprives the actual victims of even a shred of justice. When a privileged person cries themselves hoarse, they forget that they are causing damage by hoarding time, resources and narrative. More often than not, the real victims are in greater numbers but sadly, too meek to voice out their fears.
Speaking of fear, our generation’s latest favourite word is phobia. Our parents/grandparents didn’t have the luxury of this word. Yes, they too were wary of lizards and snakes and flood but they didn’t know they could be a part of a larger unit by identifying with herpetophobia, ophidiophobia and antlophobia. One word fits all. Beautiful. In some ways, our rooted desire to be a part of something hasn’t changed. We’ve grown insular but our cravings are bigger than our ego. And therein lies our intrinsic paradox. Nothing reveals it more outrageously than religion though. Instead of focusing on your fears, you can put the onus on others by employing the P-word. If somebody raises statistical doubts about Holocaust, you can call that person antisemitic and shut down the inquiry at once. Similarly, if somebody is critical of caste system and the related regressions in the Indic fold, you can simply call that person hinduphobic and disengage completely. See? Pretty simple. In recent memory, the top of the cherry goes to those who label others islamophobic just because critical questions were raised about the lack of reformation. It’s amazing how a 6-letter word can be used as a decoy to deflect attention from pressing matters.
Since I mentioned antisemitic — if the millennials were around in the 1930s and ’40s, the correct word would have been judeophobic — isn’t it strange that post-WW2, this particular word has come to envelope Jewish fold instead of the whole Semitic fold? Aren’t the Arabs Semitic too? Isn’t that true about the Assyrians and several north African tribes? Just because one part of the fold was targeted by the Nazis, the others leave the fold? Strange. Fortunately, unlike religion, culture and language last longer and don’t hide transgressions. We might be living in 2020 assuming that ‘antisemitic’ solves the Hitler problem but it doesn’t. If anything, it shows how narrow-minded our understanding is of people and their histories. Today, Arabic is the most spoken Semitic language in the world whereas Hebrew is not even in the top-3 list. Yet, when you read the word ‘antisemtic’, you immediately think of Jews.
Speaking of language, growing up in a naturally naturally multilingual society can be a disadvantage. Think about it. If you are an Indian, chances are you grew up listening to more than two languages around you. So, in a way, a weird naturalization process took place in your mind at a very young age. As a child, a new language doesn’t faze you at all. You listen, you pick it up. Which is why I wasn’t surprised when Shah Rukh Khan revealed during the promotions of Chennai Express (2013) that his earliest childhood memories are of Mangalore, implying that he was familiar with Tulu as a kid. His grandfather worked at the Mangalore Port so it made sense for his family to settle in the coastal sense, before moving north. Anyway, I digressed. The point is SRK may not remember a word of Tulu from his childhood days but back then, he must have promptly learned the tongue. That’s how it is for most Indian kids because multilingual is not a phenomenon for us. It’s a sign of normalcy. However, the problem occurs later in life. At least that’s what my observation has been so far: the desire to learn a new language in adulthood is sorely lacking amongst us desis. Maybe it’s a case of too much, too soon.
Over the past four weeks, I’ve hosted 24 zoom quiz sessions, averaging 80 minutes each, and there have been many learnings. First thing first, people aren’t scared of quizzes per se. They are scared of public humiliation, playing to the age-old horror of not knowing the answer. So much so, most participants are so afraid of getting it wrong that they resort to “Pass” instead of taking a chance. In my view, quizzing is mainly composed of three elements:
- Listening/Reading the questions carefully
- Paying attention to co-participants’ answers for clues
- Listening/Reading the hints very carefully
Nearly 50% to 60% of a quiz is based on guesses. You connect the dots and get closer to the answer. Where is the rocket science in this? If you don’t know the answer and are wired up about not knowing the exact answer, then when are you going to learn to be analytical and deductive? The trick is to gain 5 points if 10 points is out range. That’s what makes quizzing fun. Otherwise, we can just sit in front of Google and play fastest-finger-first. Which reminds me, I’ve come across a few participants who were idiotic enough to google before replying — not realizing that I didn’t grey my hair under the tubelight — bringing down the integrity of the competition. However, overall, it’s been a smooth ride and I want to see for how long am I going to be interested in this ‘vocation’. Chess used to occupy this position not very long ago. Anyhow, as always, if you wish to participate in Strangers’ Quiz, do drop a brief email to shakti03@gmail.com
