Literary Diarrhoea

It was white in colour, carelessly painted. The canvas of this art was in fact the side panel of an orange phone booth, situated right beside the Rukun Tetangga operations office (which doubles as our Art Class in the daytime). The ink, probably from a spray paint, had dribbled a little before drying up; creating an effect usually reserved for posters of B-grade horror films. I stood for a while, checking with my memory, of this very unusual but hauntingly familiar image I saw in front of my 9-year-old eyes. After a while, impatience got the better of me, and I tugged on my brother’s sleeves and inquired, as would every obedient younger brother.

“It’s a bad word, the gangsters in my school use it,” my 12 year-old elder brother explained.

I stared again.

FUCK.

It looked too simple, too harmless to be a bad word. It was just 4 letters, but it looked like so much more, being sprayed across a public facility, staring out at me with stealth. I needed to probe further.

“How do you pronounce it?” I asked innocently. My brother was evidently annoyed.

“I’ll tell you, only if you promise not to use it ever. And don’t tell Appa I taught you,” he looked almost like my dad when he warned me like this.

“Of course, I promise!”

“Fuck”

“Fuck? Isn’t it FOOOK? Like in Cook?”

“No it’s fuck, now shut up and don’t say that word again. It’s a bad word”

I remember clearly, that was the only word in my mind the whole trip back home.

This really is a true story; I think my brother would vouch for me. But I wouldn’t blame him if he had forgotten about this whole incident. It wasn’t much of an eventful day in his life. But to me, it was a beginning of a great discovery.

I don’t think I need to explain about that experience, involving dictionaries and uncomfortable conversations with elders. My point lies not in that. On the other hand, allow me to concentrate on the matter of bad words and my point of view.

For me personally, fuck is not a bad word at all. In fact, I would say fuck is a really convenient word in casual conversations. For example, I will never be able to tell you how difficult my exam was. Except if I use fuck.

IT WAS FUCKING DIFFICULT.

Or

IT WAS FUCKED UP.

The point is right there, there need be no further inquiry on the level of difficulty. It was just fucking difficult. If I had said it was very difficult, I can bet my ass some idiot would ask me,

“How difficult, can you still pass?”

But when I say it’s fucking difficult, you know what the fuck I mean. Period.

Same goes to post-examination dialogues.

“IM FUCKED”

Same goes to describing how much I studied.

“I STUDIED UP TO 5 IN THE FUCKING MORNING”

Or how much I have yet to study.

“I HAVE 7 FUCKING CHAPTERS LEFT”

No one word has done so much for the English Language than the word Fuck. You either fucking acknowledge that fact or just fuck off.

Now, I have a list of bad words I would like to share with you.

INCOMPETENCE

FEAR

DEPRESSION

MELANCHOLY

DESPAIR

JEALOUSY

MISERY

ANGER

I think you get the picture. All the word Fuck does, is help us paint a better picture, in times when conventional language fails us. But the words above; they represent the growing trend of using big terms to mark ones ineptitude. Those are bad words. Those are words abused by incompetent humans to blame their lack of ability on something external, something out of the reach of their control.

And, what’s more, we have gold-digging, money-spinning doctors, dieticians, psychologists and psychiatrists who jump into the opportunity of making the best out of these bad words. And they pay, for sitting in a fucking shrink’s office and telling him how much the burden of life weighs on their feeble fucking shoulders. It’s ridiculous, for a grown human to blame a break-off in a relationship, for example, for the way his life has turned out. Your girlfriend cheats on you, fucking pick yourself up and move on, bitch! Don’t become an alcoholic or a drug addict! That’s fucking brainless, retard!

And I don’t want to write further, for fear of accidentally using any fucking bad words that might fucking offend the reader.

Fuck, man!

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