Swearing my mouth off

i actually grew up in a nice family - difficult to believe when you consider how i turned out! A family where swearing was not allowed, where you were supposed to answer with 'Aiga' (a corruption of the hindi word 'aagya' - 'your command')whenever anyone called you. So i grew up not dirtying my mouth with Manipuri swear words. Some of my classmates used to pepper their sentences with words never heard inside our house - even today, i do not know the meaning of some of the swear words. The strongest swear word i used was 'hingchabi' (witch).

Then high school happened. So i graduated to using 'damn' and 'shit'. But never at home.

Then i moved to another city, another life. Hostel, new friends...And since i was/am no angel and home was so far away, swear words came into my life. Fast and furious. To make up for all those lost years. And one day, i gathered enough courage to say the F word out loud. i don't remember whether i felt liberated spitting out that word. Like they say, the next time is always easier - be it murder or swearing. At one stage, i used it pretty liberally - to emphasize my point or just to shock people and myself. Since almost everybody else around me was using it, it felt less obnoxious.

Then work happened. And the F word went hibernating, unable to withstand the niceties of office life. Out came small-time galis. And from K, who used to be my next door cubicle mate, i imbibed the habit of saying 'sala'. 'Sala' became my favourite swear word. When SC and i used to have our everyday fights in the office, it would go like 'tui sala' 'tor khandaan sala'...

Then 'harami' came into the picture and sala and harami made such a nice pair. Of course, i never could bring myself to say harami out loud for the whole project to hear. i only used it with SC and SM in private. And we came up with this beautiful gali - salami (sala + harami). So we used to go like 'Salami' and no-one was any the wiser.

Since moving here, i don't have anyone to swear at. My new colleagues are squeaky clean and i am afraid they would go up in flames if i were to swear at them. So i only get to swear when i talk to SM or SC or when i chat to SN (the poor girl - she has now resorted to swearing - i am the bestest bad apple around). i use the F word now very sparsely. Sometimes when i am angry, really really really fire-spitting angry with him, in my posts when i am really disturbed, sometimes silently in my head when i rant at life...

But till today, i have never been able to swear in Manipuri. The only time i ever said a bad Manipuri swear word was when i was really small and i was used (very willing, i must add) by all my bigger cousins as a parrot to say the things they dare not. i remember being taken to a tailor's by my teen-aged cousin along with her friends and all along the way, they taught me what to say. i was a very eager beaver then and i remember reciting their script complete with swear words at the tailor! i don't remember whether i was punished when words got around about it. But that was the last time i ever sweared in Manipuri. Sala!

existential nonsense

i look out from the window and see the golden leaves swaying in the wind and wonder whether they know it would not be long before they fall down. And i wonder about life, about hope, about love. i have one moment filled with this incredible lightness of being - when you know nothing matters in this life. But soon, that moment is swept away, as always. And i find myself back in the land of the living and worrying lot.

Why do these thoughts torment me? These thoughts of not knowing who i am, what i really want in life. i am the kind that would miss out on life because i am too busy trying to find the 'meaning' of my existence. Only to realise that life has passed me by while i was busy trying to figure it out.

For someone so intelligent, i can be such a fool at times!!

love...

"...Someone always waiting for someone who never comes home. Always someone loving something more than that thing loves them. And after a while you want to destroy whatever that thing is, so it can hurt you no more."

--Ray Bradbury's the foghorn

@######$%^&

It is just so hopelessly frustrating when you know the place you call home is overrun by such f%^&#$^@# morons. i am talking about the so called student unions who are forcing schools and colleges to boycott classes - the fate of the entire student community held at ransom by a handful of people who call themselves students.

Who are these people? What right do they have to force thousands of students to give up their studies to further their cause - whatever their cause is? You begin to despair for those students with dreams of pursuing higher studies. Apparently, the student bodies are threatening the board of education not to go ahead with exam plans. They talk about right to life and they play with the lives of thousands.

Now where are those so called saviours of our society? Where are those meira paibis? They will never be there when it counts. i guess they are too busy 'collecting' others' hard earned money or too busy meting out 'justice'.

When will this madness cease?

quote unqoute

“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others”

--marcus aurelius