The joy of being pointless
Last decade, I used to call myself antiwordist. I coined that word — I have a habit of coining words that nobody else uses except me — and it meant somebody who doesn’t wish to be a victim of a given word. For example, in my view, words are potent but none more than intentions. By this yardstick, the F-word is only as powerful—or to use a more millennial term, offensive — as the N-word provided there is an intention to intimidate. Calling a bespectacled person a geek or a nerd is not exactly a compliment either. Words, by themselves, don’t mean anything. They are merely the crutches of our worldly aspirations. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Anyway, I don’t use antiwordist to describe myself anymore. I’ve come to realize that words tend to lose their charm when too much emphasis is placed on what is said instead of what is done. The greatest tragedy of a society is the ignorance of a basic fact that words can act as fillers but actions can’t. Which might help us understand why there is so much noise from the political circle about the smog in Delhi. Only words. Why? Because they are buying time. Again, why? Because they don’t have the remedy. Simply put, being clueless is alright but being pointless could be a dangerous move. And our so-called leaders are dancing fecklessly on the terrace of pointlessness.
Now that we’ve established what’s going on, let me segue your attention to my aimless pursuit of knowing stuff that don’t matter and yet somehow allows me brief moments of joy. The joy of being pointless without having to pay the price like our politicians will. For years, since the age of 11 to be precise, I’ve been collecting tidbits from around the world to nourish my curiosity. None of these exercises help me in any way, professional or otherwise. Regardless, I’ve been chasing words, trivia, stats, societal nuggets, anecdotes, etc. with utmost dedication for about two decades now. This pursuit ranks second only to me keeping myself alive. Hence the term ‘trivia slut’ in my profile. Somebody from my AMA asked me this question and I wanted to walk through the nuances instead of typing a pithy reply. In all fairness, the S-word could be offensive but like I explained above, it isn’t.
Being a trivia slut entails several benefits; the most enormous of which being the utter loneliness of knowing things others can only pretend to be interested in.
Let me give you some examples from my recent notes. Go through them, if possible, and see anything piques your awareness.
Indian cotton was the first global consumer commodity and this happened during the 17th Century. American slavery has a LOT to do with our cotton.
Asia: Mt. Everest
Africa: Mt. Kiliminjaro
Europe: Mt. Elbrus
N.America: Mt. Mckinley
S.America: Aconcagua
Antarctica: Vinson Massif
Oceania: Cartensz PyramidNiger, Liberia, CAR, and DR Congo are among the poorest countries in the world for a very simple reason: the incomes there are not increasing.
The Lindy effect is a concept that the future life expectancy of some non-perishable things like a technology or an idea is proportional to their current age, so that every additional period of survival implies a longer remaining life expectancy.
Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) = Mumbai + Thane + Navi Mumbai + Kalyan-Dombivali + Vasai-Virar
Kannauj is the ‘Attar capital of India’.
The first animals farmed by humans were not goats, cows, pigs, or sheep, but snails.
N. Europe’s usurpation of Ancient Western Civilization (Med) was started w/the Holy Roman Empire usurpation of the Roman Empire. For the Holy Roman Empire was never Roman: Byzantium was. Nor was it ever Holy. Nor was it an Empire.
stultify: cause to lose enthusiasm and initiative
In the Trendelenburg position, the patient is laid supine, or flat on the back with the feet higher than the head by 15–30 degrees.
The ‘h’ in ‘ghost‘ is a historical hiccup. William Caxton, having first practised his trade in Flanders, brought Flemish typesetters back to England to help set up his printing press — they lobbed an ‘h’ into English ‘gost’ because their own native word was ‘gheest’. Aghast and ghastly were both in turn influenced by that ‘h’ in ghost: they were ‘agast’ and ‘gastly’ before.
Chongryon: what North Koreans in Japan are called
hueristic availability: what we see is what we start to believe; if blacks are shown as thieves, browns are shown as smelly, blondes are shown as dumb, you’ll tend to believe that all these three factors are absolutely true
ambisinistrous: the very opposite of ambidextrous
My brother asked why it is Lal Quila and not Lal Qila. Turns out there is a clear distinction between qaaf ق and kaaf ک in Urdu and when you write in English Quila seems like a better spelling. Another example: Quaid-e-Azam and not Qaid-e-Azam.
Benazir means matchless in Persian. The Sanskrit equivalent could be Nistula.
Popular culture totally misinterpreted the meaning of the word Jumla. It is an Urdu word meaning ‘a clause’ or ‘a sentence’.
resfeber (n.) (Swedish): the restless race of the traveller’s heart before the journey begins
Indonesia isn’t the queen of islands. Sweden has 267,570 islands within its territory, the most of any country in the world. It is followed by Finland, Norway and Canada.
In Korean, there is no word for brother or sister (but there are words for older/younger brother/sister).
Kinshasa is already the biggest French-speaking city surpassing Paris.
ruinenlust: the irresistible pleasure of seeing a deeply distressed object in the process of falling to pieces
desiderata: desired things in Latin
terra nullius: unclaimed land in Latin; there are quite a lot of unclaimed lands in the world
The word ‘bigot’ is derived from ‘by God’ and originally meant ‘a very religious person’. How times change! How words change!
An endonym is the name for a place, site or location in the language of the people who live there. E.g. Suomi for Finland and Zhōngguó for China, Druk Yul, Bhutan’s name for itself, thought to mean “land of the thunder dragon” and so on.
Colombia is named after Columbus, though not by him.
Nauru, an island northeast of Australia, is perhaps the most delightful, reportedly named after the indigenous word for “I go to the beach.”
Mexico is also said to have lunar roots, the Spanish simplification of the Aztec city, Metztlixihtlico, meaning “in the navel of the moon.”
France is named for the Franks; Italy for the Vitali tribe; Switzerland for the Schwyz people. 대한민국, romanized as Daehan Minguk, is the Korean name for South Korea. Daehan means ‘Great Han’ after the three Han tribes from the 2nd century BC.
Burkina Faso, coined in 1984, means ‘land of honest men’ whereas Guinea and its namesakes — Guinea-Bissau, Papua New Guinea, Equatorial Guinea — come possibly from the Tuareg word ‘aginaw’ meaning ‘black people’, used by the Portuguese in the 15th century to refer to a larger region of west Africa.
In Sanskrit the word ‘neelaabh’ is a compound meaning ‘blue-splendour’, refers to the blue hues of receding ridge-lines in haze.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a short-term, goal-oriented psychotherapy treatment that takes a hands-on, practical approach to problem-solving. Its goal is to change patterns of thinking or behavior that are behind people’s difficulties, and so change the way they feel.
Ptolemy, the 2nd century geographer, identifies the Tulu Nadu region as Olokhoira which is widely believed to be a corruption of the term Alva Kheda, ‘the land of the Alvas’.
Convexity is a measure of the curvature in the relationship between bond prices and bond yields that demonstrates how the duration of a bond changes as the interest rate changes.
Iceland has not had an army since 1869. It also has no air force or navy, but is a member of NATO.
Allemagne is Germany in French and Alemania is Germany in Spanish.
smashing, smidgen, trousers: English words of Scottish Gaelic origin
The mores in social mores is pronounced as moh-rays and not mores.
The right hemisphere of our brain works as a parallel processor while the left hemisphere works as a serial processor.
mes que un club: more than a club; something attributed to Barcelona FC mainly because it’s owned by the people of Barcelona and not corporate hegemons
The name Saar stems from the Celtic word sara (streaming water), and the Roman name of the river, saravus.
senyera: the original name of Catalonian flag
5 evils in capitalism: squalor, idleness, waste, ignorance and disease
Jan Smuts was the only man to sign both of the peace treaties ending the First and Second World Wars.
double uncle: a man who is one’s uncle in two ways, e.g. being a brother of one parent and the husband of a sibling of the other
stanpayi jeev: the term for mammals in Hindi
Theravada Buddhism has been the Cambodian state religion since the 13th century AD (excepting the Khmer Rouge period), and is currently estimated to be the religion of 97% of the population. The history of Buddhism in Cambodia spans nearly 2000 years, across a number of successive kingdoms and empires.
The four bo leaves in the Sri Lankan flag represent the fourth virtues of Buddhism. Mettha (loving kindness), karuna (compassion), upsekha (equanimity) and mudhita (happiness).
The eight hair on the lion’s tail in the Sri Lankan flag represent the eight fold of Buddhism.
A twoosh is a tweet that is exactly 140 characters, no more no less! Wonder what the 280 one will be called?
benighted: to be caught by fall of darkness while out walking or climbing (also, intellectually or morally ignorant)
Thiruvalluvar, the philosopher-poet who composed Thirukkural, the monumental Tamil treatise on ethics, was a weaver by profession and a Dalit. So were Avvaiyar, the great woman poet of the Sangam period, and Sekkizhar, the Shaiva saint-poet. The narrators of the Mahabharata’s Adi Parva — the celebrated bards Ugrasrava, Shuka and Sanjaya — were avowedly half-castes. Both Shudraka, author of the Mrichhakatika, and Bharata, who wrote the Natyasastra, were believed to be men of low birth. The same is true for Valmiki who wrote Ramayana.
In Kerala, lower caste Avarna Hindus (Dalits & OBC Ezhavas) were denied temple entry till 1936. Avarnas form 75.3% of Kerala Hindus.
Bees are just vegetarian wasps.
mozhikkullu mozhi: language within language [Tamil]
The spoken Tamil is called seri thamizh and literary Tamil is called sen thamizh.
Pilots in WW1 weren’t issued parachutes because it was feared they’d too easily abandon their planes.
The first government to discourage smoking on health grounds was Nazi Germany.
Kayak is an Inuit word meaning ‘man-boat’. Strictly speaking, a woman’s version is a ‘umiak’.
boondoggle: a project that is considered a waste of both time and money, yet is often continued due to extraneous policy or political motivations
terviseks: Cheers in Estonian
chak-hao: black rice in Manipur
wench: voluptuous woman who is feisty like a pirate
fixer-upper: a house in need of repairs (used chiefly in connection with the purchase of such a house)
Click languages (of Africa) could very well be the oldest surviving variety of speech.
Khoisan: the original name of Bushmen of Kalahari desert although they prefer San
sedentism: settling down
Mesopotamia literally means “between the rivers” and spanned a major civilization.
Our closest animal relative, the chimpanzee, has a colon three times as large as ours, because its diet of raw food is so much harder to digest.
All right, let’s stop here.
Now that you’ve read all this, kindly tell me, what exactly is the point?
