A bone of contention

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Illustration: Bhaskaran

WICKED WORD By V.S. Jayaschandran

Tamiflu maker Roche pays Gilead Sciences 18 per cent as royalties. Gilead holds the patent. Donald Rumsfeld was chairman of Gilead before he became US secretary of defence in 2001. He is still its major shareholder. Rumsfeld's assets zoomed when President Bush saw doom in the avian flu in 2005—he falsely predicted 2,00,000 flu cases in the US. India is now the land of opportunity for the flu gang.

Gilead is a biblical name meaning hill of testimony. The word testimony shares its Latin root, testis, with testicle. Not all etymologists agree that witnesses in ancient Rome put their hands on their testicles while testifying in court. But a testicle touch indicated trust. Abraham asked his servant to put his hand “under my thigh” and swear that he would bring a god-fearing bride for Isaac.

Judges in India agonised over their own assets in August. They behaved like bikinis on the beach: ready to reveal, but denying a closer look. Manmohan Singh worried about pendency. It is an old infirmity. He offered to “walk the extra mile” to level the pile of pending cases. The phrase “go the extra mile” is from the Bible. A Roman soldier on the march carried heavy arms and other stuff. Law allowed him to collar a passerby to carry his load for a mile. The carriers hated it. Jesus preached them love: “Whoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.” That is the extra mile.

The Swiss Banks Association has lent Indian fat cats an extra smile. It says it will not allow any fishing expedition by India. A fishing expedition is a legal investigation with the idea of discovering something that can be used for later proceedings. A fishing story is an exaggerated account. You lay it thick.
A whaling expedition epic, Moby Dick, has the best opening line in American literature. “Call me Ishmael,” it goes. The Bulwer Lytton Prize, a mock award, is given for worst opening lines. Lytton's novel Paul Clifford opens thus: “It was a dark and stormy night.” The silly prize this year went to a man who wrote a paragraph about a night on a whaler ship.

Arabs trace their roots to the biblical Ishmael. They call him Ismail. He was born when his father, Abraham, was 86 years old. Yet, Abraham fell to the ground, rolling in laughter, when God said he would have another son, Isaac. Abraham was then 99. All God wanted in return was a circumcision treaty. Abraham and Ishmael obliged with their foreskin.

Ishmael is a telepathic gorilla in David Quinn's book Ishmael. Quinn says the rib that God took from Adam to create Eve was actually a bone in the penis. Man lacks this bone, which most other mammals have. Man's evolutionary cousins the gorilla and the chimpanzee are equipped with it. The Hebrew word for rib was a euphemism for the bone. Quinn traces the seam on the scrotum and on the underside of the shaft as telltale proof of the divine surgery.

Scientists call the bone baculum. Arun Shourie, who often quotes from Alice in Wonderland, might hit the roof if told that the rabbit does not have it. But the walrus, which sings of cabbages and kings, has an impressive one. It could be even 2.5 metres long.

Scientist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, is a staunch evolutionist. He says, while evolving from apes, females found baculum-less males healthier, and so more interesting in bed. This sexual selection led to “boneless” babies and eventual extinction of human baculum. Sufferers of erectile dysfunction can forgive neither the women nor God.

Horses and hyenas have no baculum. Nor do whales and dolphins, though the latter have quickies many times a day. They have enormous desire and can romance human beings. Next time a dolphin tries to save you from drowning in the sea, take care to cover your base.
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(THE WEEK)
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