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It was a sunny morning in Calcutta thirty years back. My first day in college. The hallowed Presidency College. After spending two years in a boys school for my ISC, I was back in a co-ed set up. There were 18 girls and 3 boys in my class. I had got into Sociology hons and the sex ratio was rather skewed. The batch senior to us, the second year, was an all girls batch. Their seniors, the third year batch, had one boy! 


We headed to our individual departments from the portico once the bell rang. A new building was coming up for the then newly formed sociology department. Till then we were given a corner in the EPL, economics and political science, building. 


I walked by the huge college ground, past the physics, chemistry and geology buildings, towards our department. We soon figured out a short cut to reach the canteen but it took us a few weeks before we mustered the courage to go to the canteen as we were worried about being ragged.


Ragged we were on the first day itself. I saw a big group of girls surrounding one of the boys in our class in front of our building. He was my friend and classmate from school. He was being ragged! Albeit in a mild manner. 


A fight seemed to break out among the, er, raggers. A skirmish between the second and third year girls about who got to rag us boys first. Voices rose, as did tempers. Suddenly  one of the girls said ‘eff you’ to the others and stormed off.


I turned red. I had never come across a girl using swear words before. I realised that my sheltered school life was over. I was a collegian now. 





I know that in today’s woke age I might get cancelled for saying that I was scandalised on seeing a member of the fairer sex use cuss words. Let me assure you that I have nothing against a woman’s right to use unparliamentary language, but please try to understand where I was coming from.


Forget social mores, even the country was yet to be liberalised in 1992. I had studied in missionary schools. The last one being a boys school. A lot of emphasis was put on propriety and our world was rather Victorian. You treated women with respect and this included not swearing in front of them. And vice versa. 


Swear words weren’t used in class or in the presence of elders. Nor in newspapers, magazines, television or even movies. 


The world around has changed a lot in thirty years. Pax Americana replaced Queens English in post liberalisation India and things became a lot more informal in all fields including language. With the emergence of social media and more recently OTT, the written word has come closer to the spoken word, with most rules of the past being cast aside. The eff word has long been normalised.


I stayed clear of using swear words when I began blogging and continue to do so 14 years and 11 months later. 


Which is why, when I woke up in pain this morning an decided to have the chicken sandwich from Candies, in direct contravention of what I’d been advised on health grounds, I wrote, ‘consummate the diet. Kill the pain,’ on Instagram.


That’s the closest I could get to express in public what I was actually feeling!


Ps: K is rather worried about the Hindi I am picking up while watching shows such as Mirzapur and Jamtara and is looking for someone who can download the Ramayan and get me to watch it instead.


    Baby Loaf sat by me while my physio was on

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