Fleas of a thousand camels
- By Bhishmadev Seebaluck
- Published 14th August, 2008
Would you like to request the orchestra to play anything in particular? Yes, dominoes. - George Bernard Shaw
My dear Billy,
The title of this piece may be grossly misleading, because I propose to deal neither with fleas nor camels. They are just beasts plucked, not from the animal world, but from an old Arabian malediction which curses thus: “May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits.”
You may get an inkling of how exasperatingly provoked and harassed one must be in order to hurl such an execration at somebody's face. Hasn't it ever occurred to you to have a strong yearning to bury your teeth inside somebody's flesh?
Such a feeling visits most mortals from time to time, my dear Billy. But we have learned to control our primitive tendencies, and we are seldom going to bite somebody for provoking us, although there are many who often have recourse to graver measures like thrusting a knife into another person's tummy,or simply firing a shot at his skull.
Most of us, however, do opt for the less barbarian, but probably more incisive, more enduring alternative of showering a flow of verbal imprecation on the offender. One fine example is drawn from one of your own characters who flung, “Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon.” This is more biting, more harmful, my dear Billy.
Those of us who will not go to the length of inflicting physical pain upon our fellow human beings have a wide choice of insults and curses to bestow in its place. Mark Twain wrote: “I admire him, I freely confess. And when his time comes, I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake. Another insult from the same Mark Twain was when he came visiting and it was directed towards all Mauritians. He said, “Mauritians brag so much about their country that you would have the impression that God had created Mauritius first then copied Paradise from it.” But this, as you know, has been corrupted and taken out of its context to blow the trumpet of Mauritius.
I once dismissed a real pest with these words, “How
many times do I have to flush before you go away?”
People sometimes become exasperated and let out all sorts of insults of the likes of: “He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death,'” or better still, “I worship the ground he's buried in.” I once read this beautiful piece of insult, “When they circumcised you, they threw away the wrong bit.” A jilted lover found this to console himself with, “I treasure every moment that I don't see her,” all the time hankering for her to come back.
Insults do not always have a verbal utterance, my dear Billy. They can also be expressed through action and deed, like an obscene gesture, or even an innocent if the other person misinterprets your intention, or chooses to be offended as in the following story.
A coolie used to look after his white boss' garden after his day's chore in the sugar cane fields. One Sunday, he committed the crime of wearing a pair of shoes to attend a wedding in another village. His luck was at its lowest for his boss' wife caught him with the shoes on his feet as she was returning from Church. She felt highly wounded. She stopped her car and insulted the poor labourer copiously for daring to wear shoes. “Do you think you are my husband?” she exclaimed in exasperation.
I have myself been insulted quite a number of times, my dear Billy, mostly when some of my columns have not pleased some people, like the one on Salman Rushdie recently. But I don't mind that; on the contrary, such insults provoke laughter, because most of the time, the antagonists choose to insult when they cannot defend.
Insults are also often used as a mixture with injury. Sometimes they are used for pulling the legs of one's friends. But these are rather mild and taken in a light vein and in a sporting spirit. For example, one will say, “Looking at how thin you are, people would think there was famine in the country;” to which the other will reply, “And looking at how fat you are, people would think you were the cause of it.”
Whenever I take a look at my own surroundings, my dear Billy, I often tell myself that if I were a gravedigger there are some people for whom it would give me great pleasure to work for free.
My dear Billy,
The title of this piece may be grossly misleading, because I propose to deal neither with fleas nor camels. They are just beasts plucked, not from the animal world, but from an old Arabian malediction which curses thus: “May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits.”
You may get an inkling of how exasperatingly provoked and harassed one must be in order to hurl such an execration at somebody's face. Hasn't it ever occurred to you to have a strong yearning to bury your teeth inside somebody's flesh?
Such a feeling visits most mortals from time to time, my dear Billy. But we have learned to control our primitive tendencies, and we are seldom going to bite somebody for provoking us, although there are many who often have recourse to graver measures like thrusting a knife into another person's tummy,or simply firing a shot at his skull.
Most of us, however, do opt for the less barbarian, but probably more incisive, more enduring alternative of showering a flow of verbal imprecation on the offender. One fine example is drawn from one of your own characters who flung, “Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon.” This is more biting, more harmful, my dear Billy.
Those of us who will not go to the length of inflicting physical pain upon our fellow human beings have a wide choice of insults and curses to bestow in its place. Mark Twain wrote: “I admire him, I freely confess. And when his time comes, I shall buy a piece of the rope for a keepsake. Another insult from the same Mark Twain was when he came visiting and it was directed towards all Mauritians. He said, “Mauritians brag so much about their country that you would have the impression that God had created Mauritius first then copied Paradise from it.” But this, as you know, has been corrupted and taken out of its context to blow the trumpet of Mauritius.
I once dismissed a real pest with these words, “How
People sometimes become exasperated and let out all sorts of insults of the likes of: “He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death,'” or better still, “I worship the ground he's buried in.” I once read this beautiful piece of insult, “When they circumcised you, they threw away the wrong bit.” A jilted lover found this to console himself with, “I treasure every moment that I don't see her,” all the time hankering for her to come back.
Insults do not always have a verbal utterance, my dear Billy. They can also be expressed through action and deed, like an obscene gesture, or even an innocent if the other person misinterprets your intention, or chooses to be offended as in the following story.
A coolie used to look after his white boss' garden after his day's chore in the sugar cane fields. One Sunday, he committed the crime of wearing a pair of shoes to attend a wedding in another village. His luck was at its lowest for his boss' wife caught him with the shoes on his feet as she was returning from Church. She felt highly wounded. She stopped her car and insulted the poor labourer copiously for daring to wear shoes. “Do you think you are my husband?” she exclaimed in exasperation.
I have myself been insulted quite a number of times, my dear Billy, mostly when some of my columns have not pleased some people, like the one on Salman Rushdie recently. But I don't mind that; on the contrary, such insults provoke laughter, because most of the time, the antagonists choose to insult when they cannot defend.
Insults are also often used as a mixture with injury. Sometimes they are used for pulling the legs of one's friends. But these are rather mild and taken in a light vein and in a sporting spirit. For example, one will say, “Looking at how thin you are, people would think there was famine in the country;” to which the other will reply, “And looking at how fat you are, people would think you were the cause of it.”
Whenever I take a look at my own surroundings, my dear Billy, I often tell myself that if I were a gravedigger there are some people for whom it would give me great pleasure to work for free.
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