Words - Language of life

 

Was universe born in a bang? Will it end one day in a crunch? Is man a product of evolution or the creation of an unfathomably profound being? How can human heart simultaneously shelter both: desolate miseries and eternal joys? Is human decision-making inherently rational or anecdotal? Will our species perish before does the earth?

Are these queries lofty, yet futile, preoccupations of an idle mind? Or do they highlight a distinguishing attribute of our species, Homo Sapiens, the Man who knows?

Origin of universe and life can be argued till there is none left standing, but knowledge could not have begun without a mind capable of thinking. And the language of thoughts is words.

Human story must have begun with word. Words are the notes that produce the music of our mind called thoughts. Rob human mind of words and it is a spectre of a ghost stage complete with tanpura, tabla, sarangi, a musician; and a funereal silence.

 

I cannot date my love for books. The farthest I look back in time; I find books were a faithful companion of my solitude. But I can discern how and when reading spawned a fascination for words.

For many years I read the book only for the story it told. Although, prose - writer's fluency and ease with words - must have made me like or dislike a particular book, I was completely unaware of the elements of writing, but for the narrative strength of the story. A good book was one that told a gripping story.

I noticed the words of the story, distinct from the narration, only when I had read a vast number of books by Somerset Maugham. I faintly discerned his prose style, hallmark of all his books, without knowing what it comprised. I saw that the way Maugham constructed a sentence held clue to the irresistible charm of his prose. I came across simple words that seemed to singlehandedly carry the thought of the complete sentence. His extreme brevity made it imperative that I understand each word. Many were new to me. There were several I knew but did not appreciate their beauty. It was the way Maugham used them that showed them in a new, bright light.

Even now, after decades, I can easily recollect a clutch of words that Maugham brought into my life. Plain words, that are now invested with deep meanings in my mind, like dispassionate, depredations, indifferent, apathetic, monotony, drudgery, raffish. These opened novel ways to look at life. There were words that pithily described a trait of a personality that I couldn’t have done in many sentences, such as solipsist, epicurean, effete, stoic, dissolute, trenchant, pernickety, captious. There were some – I didn’t know most – that widened my understanding of human condition, like tenuous, ephemeral, vagary, tenacious, sublime, apostasy, wastrel, sangfroid. I wondered at the poverty of my thoughts till then.

I soon bought a new dictionary. Browsing it became an enthralling habit. Earlier I was tired of reading the numerous meanings of a word in a dictionary. I would hurriedly, and impatiently, glean the meaning that suited the context in which I had found the word and close the dictionary with a relief. I rarely looked at the list of synonyms. Now, I read the complete synopsis of the word. It was interesting to learn various other contexts the word could be used.

I loved the synonyms, given in a separate column, in smaller fonts. It was exhilarating to learn how the various synonyms signified a subtle difference of meaning. Joi de vivre was not plain joy of life but a jubilant, vitalizing, perpetually enlivening bliss. To cotton onto a fact implied, unlike understanding, a complete, perhaps gradual, assimilation of knowledge. Anguish seemed to blight a life unlike grief or misery. Desolation was not merely a sorrow but a shadow that darkened life. Mellifluous was more captivating, soothing, overpowering, and fascinating, than sweet or harmonious.

Now, as I read, I noticed, that used inappropriately a word jarred the flow of the sentence. Its correct use imperceptibly gelled with the meaning of the passage, enhancing its beauty. I discovered a new attribute of written word, euphony – the pleasing affects sound of words produce when arranged harmoniously in a sentence. Euphonous prose heightens pleasures of reading.

I also bought a thesaurus and spent hours poring over it. This meant I spent a long time on a book now, but the pleasure it proffered multiplied hugely. I have a poor memory. I look up words constantly as I read. And I read for many hours a day. But when I need them, words do not occur to me easily. After a while I forget the meaning of a word I have not seen for long. An advantage of this is that I discover the beauty of the same word many times.

Digital media was still in future. I read whenever and wherever I found time and could sit, not too uncomfortably, with a book in my hands. I bought a tiny Collins dictionary and carried it to work. I also kept a small notebook where I jotted interesting words.

And then one day, internet rushed into our lives. In its wake came big bonanzas for word-addicts. Knowhow of every word was now click of a finger away. I downloaded Merriam-Webster. Storing favourite words became a breeze. My list of favourite words grew immensely. I often sift through it randomly and always discover few long-forgotten gems. My pocket dictionary and the notebook lie buried somewhere under the heap of my books.

As I write this piece, I dig out the notebook. Its pages are yellowing. Ink has begun to smudge the paper. I discover treasures in it, once again: Sentiments that would be mute but for these words: comeuppance, vicarious, phantasmagoria, complaisant, mordant, zeitgeist, sanctimonious, pastiche, insouciance; Synonyms but quite not alike, like these for movement: slink, clamber, totter, strut, plod, tread, thread; Onomatopoeias, that bewitching peculiarity of language, where the word imitates the sound associated with it: crackle, sizzle, pop, slurp, buzz, meow, quack, chirp, hiss, cock-a-doodle-doo, susurrating, splash, gurgle, slosh, drizzle, whack, thwack, vroom, zoom, tick-tock; Words with such lovely sound, one wants to keep rolling them on the tongue: lollapalooza, cockamamie, poppycock, flimflam, mishmash, hodgepodge; Words that wear their meaning on their sleeve: thingamajig, hobbyhorse, namby-pamby, stonewall, apple-polish, iffy, white-knuckled, know-it-all, johnny-cum-latelies, flibbertigibbet, higgledy-piggledy, buttinsky, hard-nosed, bare-knuckled, cut-and-dried, knee-slapper, jiggery-pokery.

 

A logophile is one who loves words, and logophilia is love of words. I do not know, I can count myself among them. I do not love words for themselves. Difficult words, obscure words, and foggy words in prose annoy me. Etymology, an account of the origins and meanings of words, tires me after a few moments. I do not like word games, scrabble or wordle. Rather than a large vocabulary I would prefer a well-appointed repository that I could dig in for the most appropriate choice. But perhaps, this presupposes the former.

Like an astrophysicist who sees whole worlds in his mathematical equations, and musicians who feel the physical presence of musical notes in their universe, a true logophile must be a synesthete too, discovering shapes, character, and feelings in the sound of words.

ln 1934, Robert Pirosh, a New York copywriter, coveting a career of a screenwriter in Hollywood, sent a letter to many producers in Hollywood. Pirosh’s letter is a most delectable, unabashed assertion of a logophile, of his love for words. Shashi Tharoor, another logophile, quotes it in the introduction to his book, A Wonderland of Words. 

Dear sir,

I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as straitlaced, cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory. I like spurious, black-is-white words, such as mortician, liquidate, tonsorial, demi-monde. I like suave "v" words, such as Svengali, svelte, bravura, verve. I like crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty. I like sullen, crabbed, scowling words, such as skulk, glower, scabby, churl. I like Oh-Heavens, my-gracious, land's-sake words, such as tricksy, tucker, genteel, horrid. I like elegant, flowery words, such as estivate, peregrinate, elysium, halcyon. I like wormy, squirmy, mealy words, such as crawl, blubber, squeal, drip. I like sniggly, chuckling words, such as cowlick, gurgle, bubble and burp.

I like the word screenwriter better than copywriter, so I decided to quit my job in a New York advertising agency and try my luck in Hollywood, but before taking the plunge I went to Europe for a year of study, contemplation and horsing around.

I have just returned and I still like words. May I have a few with you?

Robert Pirosh

I like words for what they mean. Simple words that hold profound meanings take my breath away. Layers of feelings, emotions, and sentiments that lie coiled up in a word, leave me spellbound. Words that fascinate me speak to me in the language of feelings and emotions they arouse. Such words brood new universes in my mind. When deprived of them for long, because of paucity of good books, I seem to inhabit a desolate land of stunted feelings.

I came across most skilful use of words in verse. Structure of poetry – need of saying much in few words – imposes an enviable parsimony on verse. Words in a good poem hold a universe within themselves. To discover this is an apogee of pleasure for a reader. Words in hands of a poet transmogrify from being a symbol of an emotion to the emotion itself. I see raw emotions throb in the lines of a poem.

 

थी वो इक शख़्स के तसव्वुर¹ से 

अब वो रानाई-ए-ख़याल² कहाँ   

1. Imagination   2. Elegance of thoughts

 

हर एक बात पे कहते हो तुम कि तू क्या है

तुम्हीं कहो कि ये अंदाज़-ए-गुफ़्तुगू¹ क्या है

1. Style of conversation

रही न ताक़त-ए-गुफ़्तार¹ और अगर हो भी

तो किस उमीद पे कहिए कि आरज़ू क्या है

1. Strength for conversation

 

मरते हैं आरज़ू में मरने की

मौत आती है पर नहीं आती

 

लाग ¹हो तो उस को हम समझें लगाव²

जब न हो कुछ भी तो धोका खाएँ क्या

उम्र भर देखा किया मरने की राह

मर गए पर देखिए दिखलाएँ क्या

1.Relation  2. Affection

 

कर रहा था ग़म-ए-जहाँ का हिसाब

आज तुम याद बे-हिसाब आए

 

कुछ तो मिरे पिंदार-ए-मोहब्बत¹ का भरम रख

तू भी तो कभी मुझ को मनाने के लिए आ

1. Pride of love

 

ये दाग़ दाग़ उजाला ये शब-गज़ीदा¹ सहर²

वो इंतिज़ार था जिस का ये वो सहर तो नहीं

1. Injured by night  2. Dawn

 

कब ठहरेगा दर्द ऐ दिल कब रात बसर होगी

सुनते थे वो आएँगे सुनते थे सहर होगी

 

I am often stunned by a word on a page that marvellously captures essence of not only the sentence but perhaps the complete passage. I remember the book, and the story through that word. The word, in my memory, remains engraved like the smile of a cheshire cat, long after the cat has been forgotten.

I read the word ineffable in Dom Moraes’s memoir Never at Home. Leela Naidu, then his friend and living with him in London, tired of his short temper and deep drinking, decided to return to India. Moraes writes of the moment he went to see her off at the airport, ‘One rainy evening I took her to the airport and watched her disappear through the departure gate, a small, lonely figure with a shoulder bag, but ineffably beautiful’. Ineffably to describe Leela’s beauty enhanced the poignance of the situation. Indescribable, untold, overwhelming, none would have had the same effect.

I came across the words flotsam and jetsam as a title of a story by Maugham. It’s a story of a small-time stage actress who marries a rubber planter of Borneo as she is getting on in years with no prospect of livelihood in sight. Coming to east, she is imprisoned in a loveless, cruel marriage, and her life, slowly, goes to pot. Words flotsam and jetsam, meaning floating wreckage and the castaway goods, captured the soul of a wasted, unwanted life.

Ineffable, Flotsam and Jetsam. I like such words that in a proper context become succulently pregnant with meaning.

 

It is a remote possibility that capacity to think, the essence of being human, has evolved in another species on earth. External world continuously weaves within me an internal world of thoughts. Interaction of these worlds mothers my self. Story of my selfhood is born in words. Richness of words enriches my self, my inner universe. And if they dry, my self will wither.

I end this essay quoting the ethereal words of Pablo Neruda, the Nobel-winning Chilean poet, who wrote an incomparably beautiful ode to words in his memoir.

You can say anything you want, yessir, but it’s the words that sing, they soar and descend … I bow to them … I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down … I love words so much … The unexpected ones … The ones I wait for greedily or stalk until, suddenly, they drop … Vowels I love … They glitter like colored stones, they leap like silver fish, they are foam, thread, metal, dew … I run after certain words … They are so beautiful that I want to fit them all into my poem … I catch them in mid-flight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set myself in front of the dish, they have a crystalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives … And then I stir them, I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them, I let them go … I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves … Everything exists in the word …