The power of words

To put it tersely, words happen to fascinate me. The obsession with words existed from the beginnings of my school education and even at this late stage when obsessions are on the downward path, they continue to ripple around my attention. Just a few days ago in a magazine published in the West, I came across the word, “dehumanise”.

Its meaning was rather complicated and can perhaps only be conveyed by examples connected to gods or God. God and Good to my simple and uncomplicated mind are almost synonymous. This nuance is rather tricky and so I have made my own demarcation that God is affiliated more or less to the West and a multitude of gods to the East, both species connected to good. I wonder how far I am correct. Anyway the topic is not God or gods but words, lovely and lithe, around which we can weave our ideas and communicate.

I came across the word, ‘Dehumanise’, in an article that dealt with two instances of human benevolence. The first was in an article on Ebola. That opens up another facet of words. Sometimes one feels sorry for the misuse of words. I have often felt sorry for the word Ebola. It is such a lovely word that could have been used as a beautiful proper noun for a beautiful African girl shining in her dark skin.

Tsunami

But some idiot or weak brained person chooses to label one of the world’s most horrible diseases by this name. Again I have gone off the rails. I must mention the other instance, that is aligned to the tsunami tragedy in our island. I have read articles penned on both these, especially on the way foreigners of both countries, Africa and Sri Lanka, busied themselves in alleviating the sufferings of the victimised citizens.

In the case of Ebola, a few of the white souled foreign doctors who arrived in Africa for medication sacrificed their own lives in the process of nursing. It was in one of the articles that dealt with Ebola and tsunami that I came across the word, dehumanise.

If you need an explanation, this is how I explained the word to myself. “You completely ignore the race and religion and country you belong to and come to the aid of the victimised party." Is there something lacking here?

Yes. I have concentrated mainly on diseases and left out a very significant lot who volunteer this dehumanisation. Those are the journalists far from the calibre of those who sit on cushioned chairs and write anything that comes their way.

The real self less journalists (bless them) are those who, unmindful of what is in store for their own lives will enter trouble–ridden countries as Afghanistan and Ukraine and Kashmir and Pakistan and Israel and Palestine (and North Lanka before war times.

Events

To report on what is happening there to make the outside world cognisant of the horrendous events. Hoping against hope that their flow of words and the melee of photos illustrating facts would help salve matters in these woeful and war torn countries, they too belong to the dehumanising lot.

Later, one can see their corpses in various hideous postures, after getting shot by the big bosses or murderous hooligans in these countries. These noble men and women too have paid with their lives for situations in countries that they have no immediate connection with. They are merely interested in the fate of humanity.

Now that I have touched on Kashmir, let me relate an incident that occurred there.

To be frank I am not that affluent to spend lavishly on a pleasure spree to this land of a 1,000 lakes but I managed to append the trip to a participation in an IBBY Conference in New Delhi. Miles and miles away from India’s mega capital I travelled in a luxury bus on a breathtaking journey taking many a dangerous curve that our Kadugannawa curve pales in comparison. Buddhang saranang gachchami I intoned more assured of this support of the Buddha as I was in His own land.

I was more reassured by a white man who sat near me, a German who introducing himself. He had heard me talking in the international language to the conductor and had decided to sit by me so that he could talk to someone when he got bored.

Immense power

“Please don’t talk about Hitler,” I pleaded making him laugh. So not only mere words have their immense power but English words, excuse me nationalists, have much more power as they are internationally bonding.

The German, however, did make me laugh by his observations about the Indian natives whom he met when out to feed himself in the thosai-cum-vadai cafes or dispose waste matter with the sky as the only canopy.

“Moment they see my red skin, they try to sell me something”, he intoned miserably adding that I am the only Asian whom he met who did not try this trick. “Just wait,” I said trying some Asiatic humour, but I actually met him again in the flower laden gardens of Kashmir. This time he was bandaged like a warrior after the second World War, his race initiated.

“What happened?” I asked now that I could talk to him like to a long lost sister.

Matrimonial business

Well, he had ‘dehumanised'. Not that he used that word for his English was rather poor, a bit better than Chancellor Merkel’s who like George 1 just refused to speak in it. You remember this George, he came from Germany on matrimonial business yet very proud of his heritage refused to talk in English. That is he refused to dehumanise if we broaden or minimise its meaning.

Now we have forgotten the German tourist in Kashmere who had intervened in a scuffle between a Kashmere trader and an Indian war monger who had begun hammering a sort of golaya or pupil of the trader.

No amount of the boy’s explanation that he was not a native Kashmir but has come there a few months back from the land of five valleys or Punjab could dispel the animosity till the German, a heavily-built man intervened to try his own muscle power on the assaulter and had got hammered in turn.

“None of your business, you pariah from the land of White Ghosts “the Indian man had cried out but the German not knowing the word dehumanising was unable to use it as an armour and explain that he was only dehumanising.

In fact, I too learnt this word, growing in importance in international politics, late in life but better late than never.

An explanation of it may run as follows, "A process by which a person of one community volunteers to help in the cause of a person of another community, no matter what the differences are.” The foreign women who came over to help our stricken families along the Southern coast are but a shining example.

Dehumanising is indeed a noble word and shines luminous amidst the vast throng of words, a gift of God or gods to humans or better still, invented by humans themselves across time and space. More are still to be invented.