Ah, cusses. I both love and hate these word-monsters. I used to be fairly generous in my dishing out of F-bombs and C-bombs and BC-bombs. I even have a link on my browser bookmarked: ‘174 ways to call someone something other than ‘penis’. I saved it so my writing wouldn’t become repetitive — a couple of mild examples, just for impact, are ‘ding-dong’ and ‘schnitzel’.
As I grow older though — and somewhat wiser — I’ve started to limit these lazy tendencies, if not eliminate them altogether. Then I watched the new season of Netflix’s Sacred Games the other day, and I backslid within minutes. A lot is happening in it, most of which zoomed past me at the speed of a stray nuclear bomb, but the one thing that did stick is how liberally the characters swear. The show’s anti-hero Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays a Mumbai gangster in possession of plenty of hubris as well as a spectacularly vulgar vocabulary. He’s a thug, and speaks like one. And it’s hilarious. I spent a few years in Mumbai, so I can say with some authority that the actor pretty much nailed the peculiarities of tapori cussing — the stretched syllables, the musicality, the colourful allegories, the insistent tone which sounds almost like a question. In Delhi, my home, it’s a bit different.
Sweary applause
Mumbai’s Hindi cursing has a velvety touch to it, relying on playful tonality and dark humour. Delhi’s, on the other hand, lacks any such subtleties. It’s a hammer smash to the gut; a punchy, full-throated roar. The styles of cursing differs across States — a place like U.P. has a softer, soulful delivery cushioning the abrasive material being delivered, while the mental gymnastics that led to the origins of some gaalis in Tamil and Malayalam are, I’d say, worthy of sweary applause.
Thanks to international streaming, cussing is becoming more common on screens now, and the Scrooges at the censor board can be bypassed. Which means an almost total replacement of punctuation with cuss words if the script allows. Like Mirzapur , a gangster series on Amazon Prime that’s basically just a bunch of murders and curses spread over a few hours.
For English-language enthusiasts, shows like Inside Edge or Made In Heaven have been doing their bit for the movement, though American serials showed us their worst bits long before. The Wire , widely considered to be one of the greatest TV series ever, is a particular highlight in the cussing genre. Another drug dealer-related show, Breaking Bad , on the other hand, managed to go five full seasons with a network-dictated limitation of one F-word per season and no more. I don’t watch a lot of movies, but I have it on good authority that even in Bollywood and other Indian cinema, there’s been a clear shift in how colloquial language is being used today, despite the censorship killjoys.
Language politics
But like I said at the beginning, I’ve reduced my usage. The politics of language is convoluted, and just about any swear word in any language is usually a lavish blend of deeply offensive and deep-rooted misogyny, homophobia, racism, casteism, and ableism, with some friendly incest or bestiality thrown in. Even a cursory glance at the politics of the C-word (which we’re obviously not repeating here) in the West shows a glaring divide between the deeply offensive American usage and the flippant, almost careless usage of the same word in the U.K. Profanities are so obviously a tool to explicitly — and, when used casually, implicitly — punch down a people.
Language is a forever-developing blob of words — some are reclaimed by communities, some are weaponised, some are eliminated, others are brought back with new meanings. Cursing is so often a form of childish rebellion picked up by teens or pre-teens — a forbidden fruit — which morphs into a habit as we go along. It’s not like the absence of those words will cause any great loss, but the unlearning takes a while. My efforts are under way, though with a critical caveat: the F-word stays.
The author and freelance culture writer from New Delhi wishes he’d studied engineering instead.
