The best of the bad word bandits

Gaston de ROSAYRO

As far as I can recall I have always been captivated with the printed word. And to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth as they say on Hulftsdorp Hill I have also been fascinated by some decidedly unprintable ones as well. That would be no surprise to any journalist of my vintage who will endorse my assertion that proficiency in profanity was once a sort of norm, a prerequisite of the trade, so to say.

I have never been a fan of outright blue humour or excessive vulgarity. Okay, I concede that I can out-swear the best of them in all three national languages and as an additional facility in Chinese and Malay. Swearing is universal. Even world leaders are not immune to it. Sir John Kotelawala, one of Sri Lanka’s most admired and controversial prime ministers of the time, was not averse to emitting a tirade of cusswords when the occasion demanded it. Media mythology has it that he castigated some photographers while he accompanied Queen Elizabeth II on her first visit here in April 1954.

Legend has it that Sir John was holding a parasol over the Queen who was taking in the panorama of the countryside through a pair of binoculars at Sigiriya. Fascinated by some object in the distance, the Queen handed the binoculars to Sir John while taking the umbrella from him and inviting him to take a look.

Delighted at the prospect of the Queen of the Commonwealth holding an umbrella over him the prime minister took his time observing the scene while muttering to the photographers in local parlance to capture the unique moment. Finally becoming incensed because he thought they were too slow with the shutters the feisty knight lambasted them with a litany of expletives which would have constrained a trooper to blush.

A totally bemused Queen kept asking: “I beg your pardon Sir John!” To which he answered: “Just telling the people behind us to watch their step, your Majesty.” Mercifully for diplomatic protocol his dirty diatribe was confined to choice Sinhala vernacular.

I must disclose that my lingo even as a lisping toddler was not exactly considered the paragon of propriety. That is because of my encounters with some vagrant urchins who were allowed the freedom of romping and foraging in our family back yard.

They were congenital exponents of shockingly shameless vocabulary. But to give them credit their vituperatively colourful banter was scandalously skilful in a dubiously creative sort of way.

I was always a fast learner particularly where languages and taboo subjects are concerned. When it comes to sheer authentic swearing few languages can be as colourful and eloquently expressive as both the Sinhala and Tamil vernacular.

I was enlightened at a tender age that certain idioms in both national languages were the diametric opposites of what they sounded like in Anglo-saxon. For example, phrases that sounded remarkably similar to, say, ‘hooks and eyes’ were decidedly not referring to the clothes fasteners you would find in your mother’s needlework basket.

Reprimands such as having my mouth rinsed out with soapy water and bottom-smackings notwithstanding were never an effective deterrent. I must add that the early aberration has held me in pretty good stead in the newsrooms of journals and in the streets of Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. And in the newsrooms the closer to the perilous deadlines the thicker and more imaginative the swearing became.

Not surprising, really, because we hacks are usually dragooned into all kinds of ungodly nocturnal shifts enjoyed by certain other professionals such as cat-burglars, twilight women and body-snatching ghouls, to name a few. That is evidently why the language of editors, sub-editors and reporters, particularly around the witching hours of 2 am or thereabouts, could never be the subject of polite parlour conversation.

Although many did not possess the same refined vocabulary of a literary genius such as Mark Twain, they certainly appeared to have been on a similar plane of thought as the great American author who once said: ‘Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.’

Yes we the wordsmiths who forge out the best for our readers, are often called upon to perform delicate surgery on badly written copy and sheer butchery on the more horrendous contributions. It goes without saying that the surgeons of the written word mind every other language but our own.

Some of the best, most colourful expletives have been fashioned by bored and frustrated journos. Yes, we are quite a breed apart. And we conjure up the more exotic abuse while prowling the ‘stone’ (pre-production line) to exorcise those beastly little printer’s devils. By this time one is assailed by myopic eye strain and it often becomes difficult to spot the most obvious faux pas even when the font is staring you in the face in all its immense 60 point glory.

Years ago when I was a young sub-editor on this very newspaper I almost missed a typographical headline blooper in titanic type that should have read: ‘Woman jumps in front of train.’ The problem was that the letter ‘p’ had been mistakenly interposed for the character ‘j’ in the word jumps.

No need to state the obvious in a single letter gaffe in the word ‘Luck’ for the lottery results headline also intercepted in the nick of time by a crusty old duty editor. It was supposed to read: ‘Luck of the draw.’

The duty editor, unrivalled in his range of outrageous curses came charging at the offending sub-editor who had missed the slip yelling a string of imaginatively coined swear words with a poetic touch: “You darn blind idiot. Do I always have to save us the blushes just because you are such a complacent huthsie-puthsie cross-eyed son of a hooksie who simply can’t take a proper looksee!”

In an environment peopled by a bunch of versatile opponents in the art of vituperation was the deaf and dumb sub-editor colleague I once worked with who could lip-read and expressed himself quite effectively with hand signs to make his point. Despite his deficiency in hearing and unable to mouth the spoken word he could out-cuss the best of them in the same offensive faculty with dramatically communicative hand gestures.

After one such episode following his gesticulated hurling of vile imprecations at a whole bunch of colleagues one of them posed the pertinent question: “Does his mother ever wash his filthy fingers with soap?”

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