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| Sunday, 1 September 2002 |
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Intrigue of 'crotchety' : English usage in Colonial and post-Colonial Sri Lanka by Padma Edirisinghe Among the words that have intrigued me stands out "Crotchety." It has nothing to do with that popular form of knitting known as crochet, Crotchet is simply a state of mind but none of my acquaintances when questioned have been able to explain it explicitly. One simply asked me, why didn't you refer Dick. That is not Dick Wittington of London fame and English perseverance but just Dick, short for dictionary. By the way talking of abs (abbreviations as Dick for dictionary) here is a little story. A hotel lady used to "abs" (short for abbreviations) while serving a customer with dessert had told him. "If this is not enough come for secs (short for a second helping). The man had nearly fallen off the chair at the unexpected invitation. Now that I am in a story telling mood here is another one analogous to my not referring up Dick for the meaning of crotchety. I was once reciting the story of Red Riding Hood (RRH) to a little relative of mine. While I was going on exaggerating the fright RRH got into on seeing the wolf she interfered to ask me. "Didn't this Red Riding Hood have a mobile phone with her?" "What is the connection?" "You mean the particular mobile phone connection?" "No. No, the connection of the mobile phone to the story." "The connection is" began the girl of the 21st century "If she had a mobile talkie she could have phoned her father and all this trouble you are about to tell me would have been averted." In the same way had I referred Dick this long harangue I am going to write on would have been stalled. Subsequent experiences in my life however threw much light on the word though no explicit clearance was ever made till the finale. Since these experiences touched on the fringe of my getting qualified for the word, I take the liberty to recite them. It was the period prior to Black July of 1983. We, the family I mean, were living in Kandy then. I worked in Colombo and every Friday evening returned to the highland citadel, by the Senkadagala Menike as ephemeral forms from the black outer world peered at me from the thick foliage under the steep mountain rings. One Saturday morning I told a downright lie to my husband, not a usual practice with me. "I have to get back to Colombo today. There is an important meeting. I forgot all about it and came home yesterday." "Don't go to Colombo today all alone. There is so much trouble brewing there." He was reading the daily paper. Have you noticed that daily papers or any kind of newspaper always give priority to morbid news, scaring the sensitive to the extreme? "But I have to go. Otherwise I may be sacked." "Then I will drive you down," he volunteered. "No. No. Don't exert yourself in your state of health. I will hop into a bus and go. By 3 p.m. I will be at home." My actually envisioned terminus was a printing press in Maradana (minus a telephone) which I didn't want him to know. How was I to tell him that I was planning to travel 100 plus kilometres just to correct three howlers in a magazine. Whose final proof I had handed over for print. I had planned to rectify it and then forgotten. The press people were working on it in the weekend and by the time I returned to Colombo the damage will be already done. So I hopped into a bus and was back safe and sound by 3 p.m. after getting rid of the howlers. That was my first explicit sign of "crotchetiness" if ever there is such a word. The magazine (Children's magazine, Lama Nirmana magazine, published by the Ministry of Education of which I was the editor) however emerged out of the machine almost flawless. Over the years my disease seemed to have gone beyond the remedy stage especially in this... (unprintable) weather where a silver streak appears in the sky every other second followed by a terrific cry signalling the wrath of gods. If I am out of the house (always I am out of the house) I keep on wondering which electronic gadget I have left unplugged. I shudder at the thought that the computer is included in the category. Then I wonder whether my man Friday has bolted to his native village. If everything else is okay I make use of the new additions to the family circle (all under three feet and none living with me). Has one of them again fallen off the stairs again? Or has the other one put his little hand into that terrific canine mouth of the beast the parents have bought in a mad fit? But my disease surfaces mostly in my writing arena. Once I had handed over an article with a photograph minus a caption. I phoned the relevant person and asked what caption he had used. "Thai prince carrying the casket of sacred relics" he answered. "Gods!" I exclaimed as if the sky had fallen down." He is not a Thai prince but a Cambodian prince." "I am off for the day. Just going out. Come over and try to do what you can before Thailand and Cambodia break out into war over that photo," was the cruel rejoinder. Gods! There was enough trouble in the world before my adding another inflammatory matter. (Somebody later told me that Thais and Cambodians look so alike that no one would have noticed the lapse). I dressed up hurriedly and made a dash to the mansion by the Beira and retrieved it in time and made the necessary correction. Everything was fine except for a very observant female loitering there who remarked "You have worn the saree upside down." "How do you know?" I asked. It was a saree with a deer pattern - little deer frolicking on green pastoral meadows and what not. "See. All the deer are waving their four legs up." I should have blushed blackish purple but a piece from the biographical writings of President J. R. Jayewardene crept into my mind. He has also dressed in a hurry and gone for a meeting in his younger days in the White Sahib's trousered kit wearing socks of two different colours and someone had remarked. "You are wearing mixed up socks," to which HE had promptly replied "No they are not mixed. In fact there is an identical pair like this at home." So I told the observant female "No, the dear deer are not upside down. They are simply doing some gymnastics." Main point was the caption came out correctly, thanks to a very obliging staff in the Beira mansion. Lastly, and very recently I remembered that I had used the word "Fauna' for "flora" in one of my pieces. I had to correct it before the... thing got exposed. So I began to dress when the phone rang. "I am coming to meet you on some important thing." Don't come now, I said and explained matters. "You are getting CROTCHETY" he said. Finally somebody was very blatant about it. Like the little kid who shouted that the emperor is going about naked. Others in my circle had been simply polite. "What is the meaning of crotchety?" I asked. "It has many connotations one of which is a propensity to imagine non-existent problems or magnify little problems outsize.' "What is the non-existent problem here or the issue unnecessarily bloated up?" I demanded. "In yourself - egoism you are imagining that the whole of Sri Lanka will be reading your article. My dear friend, Sri Lanka is a non-reading country despite its boast of high literacy. In foreign countries train commuters have their eyes glued on to a book or newspaper but here everybody is just staring at each other or at vistas beyond with a vacant look. In the middle class and upper class families where newspapers are bought everybody is busy polishing floors and the crockery and cutlery in order to keep up with the Jones' and all books and newspapers are relegated to the background like putrid corpses that should be avoided, but the obsessed writers who write reams and reams are suffering from the delusion that everybody in SL is devouring all the stuff they scribble to get rid of their fingers' itch. So be sure that only a minutely decimal fraction of Lanka's teeming 19 millions would read it and out of this too only a decimal fraction will go beyond the caption. So almost nobody would notice your lapse." My immediate reaction was to invite him home. Peace had finally descended on me at last. Maybe my new state of mind is co-related to Upekkha, that occurs frequently in Buddhist teachings, the very antithesis of being crotchety or unduly anxious, (according to Dick). |
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