One morning last weekend, the husband, N and I finished our morning tea and, as I was clearing the table, trying to balance multiple cups and the biscuit bowl on one tiny tray, predictably enough, I upturned one of the cups and leftover tea dribbled down my T-shirt.
‘F***,’ slipped out. Well, almost.
I happened to glance at the horror on N’s face and swallowed it back whole before it could demolish my good-parent image in my newly-turned-adult child’s eyes.
If you’re judging me, I don’t blame you. I totally judged myself. I am, however, allowed to explain.
I am not a swearing person. Never have been. It’s a family thing. I have never heard either of my parents swear. Ever.
Despite that, when the twins came along, I purged even the most inoffensive, mildly swear-sounding words from my vocabulary. In moments of intense agitation (like the time an autowallah crashed into me), I depended on tame expletives (if you can call them that) like stupid and idiot.
And that’s how it has always been.
So where did the F word come from?
Well, I put it down to a show called Ted Lasso on Apple TV.
Before I go into that, I have to confess I suffer from the curious case of mirroring languages. I pick up words and phrases, entire accents at times, from people around me and assimilate them seamlessly into my lingo.
When my cousins came visiting all the way from Kurukshetra, Haryana, my delicate Lucknowi accent would get a colourful Haryanvi twist.
My cousins sounded ever so cool, to me. Not so much to my mom.
‘How are you speaking?’ she’d say annoyed, to my puzzlement, because the whole thing was entirely subconscious. Mercifully, it would wear off soon and peace would be restored.
When I had a roommate from Chennai, for years after we went our separate ways, her ‘Tea kudika variya’ – roughly translated to ‘Let’s go have tea’ (or something similar) wouldn’t leave me.
Back to Ted Lasso, then.
The series, which, by the way, is the most wholesome show I’ve watched since Schitt’s Creek, is about an unfailingly optimistic American football coach hired to manage a struggling English Premier League soccer team, despite knowing little about the sport.
Now the captain of this soccer team is the frown-faced, bushy-browed, immensely crushworthy Roy Kent…
Ummm… sorry. Where was I? Went into a bit of a daydream there. He really is something.
Ah yes, the show. So if you’ve seen it, you might know where this is headed.
For everyone else, let me just say that Roy Kent could very well author a book titled ‘Million and one ways to respond with the F word’.
Angry: short, sharp – F***.
Mildly irritated: barely audible – f*.**
Frustrated: stretched out, increasingly dramatic – Fuuuuuuuu**.
Exhausted: released on a long sigh – Fuuu*.**.
Surprised: high-pitched and startled – F*?!**
Stubbed toe: immediate, loud and completely non-negotiable — FFF*!**
Yup, this right here is the Roy Kent School for Swearing.
I binge-watched the show and, by some strange process of osmosis, all this has entered my vocabulary.
The mess-up might also be due to the fact that the children aren’t around and I don’t feel the need to police myself any more.
Subconsciously, of course.
The subconscious is a sly one – creeping up on you, messing your vocabulary, tarnishing your izzat, dragging it in the mitti.
Back off, you bad bad subconscious!
So, that’s how it happened. If someday you do hear me biting back a bad word (THE bad word), know that it’s not on me.
It’s on the children (for going away), the parents (genes must surely have something to do with this), the subconscious (that wily thing) and, of course, the gorgeous Roy Kent.
I rest my case.
PS: Confess one bad habit and I’ll send you a star for being a good friend and making me feel better.
PS2: That’s not to say this is my bad habit. I’m looking at it as a temporary speech malfunction. But you go on and share yours. I’m listening.