Gone with the wind

- July 12, 2009

Illustration: Hadimani

WICKED WORD

By V.S. Jayaschandran

Columbus gave the Caniba a bad name. He called them canibales, invented stories of their eating human flesh and hunted them without compunction. Carib, another name of the Caniba, yielded the word Caribbean. They were a sea-faring tribe, with slanted eyes and yellowish skin, and both names meant 'valiant warriors'. But white men fatted the cannibal myth. They said the Carib tasted all nationalities, and found Frenchmen the most delicious and Spaniards the hardest to digest.

A more authentic Caribbean delicacy, cou-cou soup, is a magic potion that women ladle out to make men fall in love with them. Girls lace it with their own intimate juices and feed their boyfriends. Ganga channa, another West Indian preparation, serves the same purpose. While cooking it, the woman squats naked over the steaming pot of chickpeas to infuse it with her enchanting pheromones.

West Indians call a new boyfriend juvi. Girls at Sabina Park cheered Yuvi as he scored a century on June 26. It was a breezy knock all right, but cricket writers went overboard. A Caribbean paper online ran this headline: "Yuvraj ton too much for feisty Windies." 'Feisty Windies' is a curious combination. Feisty means aggressive, but the word has a troublesome wind behind it. Feisty comes from Middle English fisten, meaning to fart without sound. Though not noisy, it can be noisome. Feist was "a small wind, escaping backward, more obvious to the nose than ears." Fizzle is another word for this strong, silent type. Fizzle blows no whistle, nor sounds any trumpet.

Feisty old ladies in the 17th century, on emitting foul smells, blamed it on their lapdogs. "These feisting curs!" they cursed, to save face. Before long, feist came to mean the innocent beast itself. The smell became dog. The Old French noun 'pet' meant fart. Its verb, peter, is still intact. Shakespeare punned on petar (a small bomb) and peter (penis). Hamlet tells his mother: "For it is the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petar."

Some say Shakespeare is a pen name. They name Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, as the real author. John Aubrey celebrated the earl in Brief Lives: "This Earle of Oxford, making his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth, happened to let a fart, at which he was so abashed and ashamed that he went to travel, 7 years. On his returne, the Queen welcomed him home and sayd, My Lord, I had forgott the fart."

This anecdote could have inspired Mark Twain's 1601-a fireside conversation in the time of the Tudors. Someone breaks wind while the Queen is chatting with luminaries like Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare and Walter Raleigh. Investigating the blast, the Queen says: "Prithee, let the author confess the offspring. Will my Lady Alice testify?"
Lady Alice protests there is "no room for such a thundergust within my ancient bowels." The kind Queen absolves the young Helen saying she would have to tickle her "tender maidenhedde with many a mousie-squeak" before she learnt "to blow a hurricane like this. Was it you, my learned and ingenious Jonson?"

Jonson disowns it, and so do Bacon and Shakespeare, in their distinct literary styles. All look towards Raleigh, who then rises and says: "Most gracious maisty, it was I that did it, but indeed it was so poor and frail a note, compared with such as I am wont to furnish, that in sooth I was ashamed to call the weakling mine."

The move to amend Section 377 of the IPC had fizzled out, before the Delhi High Court struck a blow for the gays on July 2. The judgment encourages Indians to go back from Jai ho to Jai 'hind'. And cannibals-gay or not-can now perform 69 without fear of arrest. But Othello did not mean it when he tempted Desdemona with tales of hair-breadth escapes and "Cannibals that each other eat".
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(The Week)
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