You cannot say words like that

Someone in my 38storey building doesnrsquot put the trolley back where it belongs Two trolleys are usually parked in the lobby for people with luggage or heavy shopping Some tenants just abandon the trolley somewhere on their floor after use Others put it in the lift expecting that whenever it reaches the ground floor someone will push it out A few conscientious people take it back to the lobby even if it means travelling 38 floors againThe unreturned trolley is the secondmost turbulent conversation in the buildingrsquos WhatsApp chat group coming right after Why are there so many cockroaches I am usually an interested observer but a few days ago I was moved to respond when a tenant posted a photo of the trolley parked within the lift and the message Another selfish asshle just leaves the trolley for othersI posted a comment I really feel that no matter what the complaints and grievances or how strong the feelings therersquos some value in being civil Words like asshle donrsquot belong in a chat like thisThere was a whiplash reaction to being told not to swear In civil smiling Thailand where I live you wonrsquot hear much scatology but to Englishspeaking expatriates being asked to communicate without swearing is a violation of a fundamental freedom With swear words suddenly in the spotlight I began paying attention to casual references to faeces genitals and other private parts in daily conversationFair warning the rest of this column may be peppered with words that make some queasy Out of respect I will misspell the really gross ones If I write fcuk please donrsquot be baffled Or offendedA beloved favourite is shit a Swiss Army knife of a fourletter word that can stand in for just about any other word you chooseIf yoursquore the boss man yoursquore a big shit If yoursquore a celebrity yoursquore hot shitBe authentic genuine and yoursquoll be the real shit If you care for someone you give a shit Be a unicorn and theyrsquoll say yoursquore doing nextlevel shitHave you seen my shit anywhere will be correctly understood as Where did I leave my thingsIf things are not looking good itrsquos a shitshow If itrsquos dire itrsquos a shitstorm If theyrsquove called the police then the shit has hit the fanThe world swears and the words are always intimate and crude Irsquod expect India to lead as it does in every other sphere We are the country that has made a science out of defiling mothers and sisters when we swear However just like shit in English Indiarsquos mabahen variants are offensive signal an escalation of emotions and can lead to war Of course thatrsquos what makes them usefulIn July I came upon a scholarly dissertation on filthy words used in chitchat called Vulgarity in online discourse around the Englishspeaking world The authors looked at 20 Englishspeaking countries including an lsquoinner circlersquo eg the US UK Australia and lsquoouter circlersquo India Nigeria Singapore They labelled a word as vulgar if it had more acceptable variants For example fcuk has alternatives like sleep with someone or make love Similarly words like butt and arse have more circumspect cousins like behind and bottom ldquoVulgar languagerdquo they noted ldquois the natural playground for unleashing our linguistic creativity Consider colourful juxtapositions like dcikheadrdquoThe study analysed more than 17 billion words of online language identifying 597 different swear word forms including creative spellings like 4rseholes and acronyms like wtf The top three vulgar countries in the list were the USA UK Australia and mdash a surprise mdash Singapore The US is thrice as vulgar online as India in English vulgar words made up 036 per cent of all the words from their dataset The most frequent word was fcuk with a stunning 201 variantsSo why even discuss the cuss culture Because swearing requires becoming numb to the real meaning of a word A person who says Hey Irsquom in a restaurant eating shit right now but Irsquoll see you soon has blocked what that word stands for in reality or else he would have barfed We are able to throw around words like shitstorm and hot shit only because we have stopped paying attention to what they actually meanLike saying Love you too without remembering what love means when your significant other says I love youI taught a 10yearold child with Aspergerrsquos Syndrome for six months He was clever to the point of brilliance but every third word he said was a fcuk I told him that IMHO people who used just one or two words for everything they wanted to say were probably not very intelligent This riled him and he agreed to think of alternatives to fcukThe following day however he came emptyhanded ldquoI fcuking forgotrdquo he told me cheekily ldquoI was fcuking playing video games all fcuking eveningrdquoldquoIn that caserdquo I told him ldquoIrsquod like you to spend the next two hours creating alternatives to that wordrdquoHe gave me a broad definitely devilish smile ldquoNo wucking furriesrdquo he saidYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper