The dictionary has lost yet another battle against meaning. I refer, forlorn, to a new answer to an old question. The increasingly prevalent response to “How are you?” has become “I’m good”. This is illogical. “Good” is a moral proposition, whereas the question is about something more mundane, wellbeing. Language, it is true, is in constant flux, but change should at the very least be justified by necessity. What is wrong with “I’m well”? “I’m good” doesn’t even have the advantage of brevity. I gather that this restructuring of terminology began in some American television programme. God might have done a great deal to save the English queen, but he has not extended his mercy to the Queen’s English.
Confession: I joined the forces of change last week when my grandson, aged four-and-a-half and on a visit to Delhi with his parents, replied “I’m good” when asked the familiar traditional question by a guest. There is a non-negotiable rule at home. Our grandson cannot ever be wrong.
Lives that rewrite history are often shaped by some deep memory of pain.
At the time when Mahatma Gandhi was being thrown out of a train in South Africa, Babasaheb Ambedkar, the principal, though not the only architect of our Constitution, suffered similar anguish.
He along with an elder brother and cousin had gone by train to meet his father, Ramji Sakpal, who was posted in a village in Maharashtra. A letter sent ahead had been lost in transit, and his father was not on the platform to receive them. The three boys hired a bullock cart. But when the cart-owner realised they were Dalits, he asked them to get out. There is a plaque in South Africa to remind us of Gandhi’s anguish. In India we build monuments to greatness. Perhaps we should create a memorial to pain. A statue is mere puffery. Pain is a mirror.
The dreaded marriage season is back in Delhi. One has nothing against marriage. On consideration it seems a pretty reasonable idea. Marriage is like democracy: The wooing and winning exhilarates, the tough bit comes later. The high point, a marriage ceremony, may be bliss to the wedded but can be dreadful for the environment. We live in the silence of a gated community in Gurgaon; alas, our noise comes from Delhi, only a few yards away. The decibels of a next-door marriage venue, blasted through songs of a certain type, begin to scream as spirits rise with spirited consumption. The law has a curfew hour, but every law slips through grease. Marriage is a licence in more ways than one. India must be the only place where those getting married send suitable gifts — to officials, who deliberately turn a deaf ear to public nuisance.
Let the last word on public morality belong to a lady who has just passed away in Britain. Cynthia Payne became an instant celebrity in 1978 when the police arrested over 50 men, including “an MP, accountants, solicitors, barristers and businessmen”, along with a dozen women, all in various stages of undress. She was sentenced to 18 months in prison for running what the British law authorities, traditional masters of understatement, described as “a disorderly house”. Despite enormous pressure to reveal the names of her larger base of clients, Madam Cyn (as she was quickly dubbed by an eager press) never ratted. When asked, on her release, why, she gave a formidable answer: Her morals might be a little loose, but her ethics were impeccable.
