Teri maa ki….

Apologies for my foul language. But fortunately or unfortunately that is the subject of this post.

Work place, traffic, cricket ground (pun intended), fashionable night clubs, wherever you are, if you tune your ears to it, you can drench yourself in the rain of verbal abuse. Swearing is a quick way to release stress or so it’s perceived. Stress levels have increased, taking the number and frequency of usage of “gaalis” (bad words) proportionately higher. One of the lean days at work, post lunch, I took a stroll around my office complex. Men and women of all sizes, age and shape were hanging out, chatting, smoking, and having “cutting-chai” taking the noise level to a different decibel. A lady pouting her face told this male colleague of hers “f*** off b****** ”. Her male colleague retorted with mock anger, “don’t insult my mum” and the entire gang that was hanging out with them laughed oblivious to the surrounding.

I see that guys’ point. I have no issue with people swearing. Each of us has our own way of de-stressing. My question is why is it always the maa, behan and woman-related words? Ok agreed, there are also a few abusive words (if you squeeze your brain hard) that are male oriented, but they are relatively few in comparison with the recognition women get in this department. It just freaks me out to know that this injustice to male community is uniform across all languages. When you want to vent your frustration and the subject is a woman you use the term “bitch”; but when the subject in question is a man it never is as simple and straight as “dog”. You get the drift, right? I don’t mean to sound like a feminist, but this discrimination is hard to miss.

Why couldn’t Harbhajan use the term “Tera Baap ka…”? Probably that really was Andrew Symonds’s point. Tendulkar was nice enough to explain different contexts in which the term “maa” is used, including “Jai mata di”, but the damage was already done to Symonds’s mother.

The point I am making is, when you swear next time please be fair to men. Be innovative and when you manage, please share the same with me.