Does anyone still make New Year resolutions? ‘New Year’ now calls to mind late night noisy binges; drunken youngsters (and older men, too) being hauled up by the police for rash and negligent driving. This time Mumbai and Kolkata had the further distinction of fashionable women emerging out of 5-star hotels being grabbed and molested by hooligans. Clearly edifying resolutions were not on most people’s minds.
Still I’m pretty certain that quite a few people (and not just school kids) did make New Year Resolutions. I can imagine An old, tired lawyer tell his friend: ‘Briefly, no more briefs.’
A physician, rushing from hospital to hospital on his consultancy rounds, pause, to catch his breath, and mutter: ‘Physician, cure thyself.’
A family man, standing before a mirror, sternly looking at himself, hissing: ‘If you want peace at home, learn to hold your peace.’
And not just these ‘anonymities’. I can also hear (and see) certain well-known personalities, all in a ruminative, resolution-making mood.
Yediyurappa: ‘Always take a security deposit when you enter into an Agreement.’
Kumaraswamy: ‘When the time comes to pass the baton, don’t throw it away.’
Narendra Modi: ‘I will always be a CM.’ (=common man)
LK Advani: ‘Now or Never.’
Somanath Chatterjee: ‘Less noise and more sense.’
Jyoti Basu: ‘Socialism won’t work now. Let capital in.’
Mamta Bannerjee: ‘Never allow quietude overtake you. Always be where the trouble is.’
Rattan Tata: ‘Enough is enough.’
M Karunanidhi: ‘Don’t mistake imagination for reality.’
Deve Gowda; ‘To retire or not to retire — that’s the question.’
The New Year’s Eve is not just for making resolutions. Those who can make a resolution are the lucky ones. They know their goal and have the confidence to reach it; or they have learnt a lesson and now resolve not to make the same mistake again. Others who are not so lucky can only vent their exasperated frustration.
George Bush: ‘Will this ever end?’
Hillary Clinton: ‘Will I make it?’
Barack Obama: ‘On to the White House!’
Musharraf: ‘What a mess.’
Dr. Singh: ‘Will I ever get the deal through?’
And then there are others, myself among them, who would have declared: ‘Resolved not to make any resolutions,’
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The Lake Superior State University has come out with its usual list of Banished Words. No authority attaches to this list (the English language is not governed by an Academy or any other body) but it is interesting to see some of the words in the banished list.
‘9/11’ it seems has been so overused that it should not be used any more. But this is surprising. Like AD or BC 9/11 marks a milestone in history. The world changed radically from that date onwards. It heralded the Age of Terror. God forbid that this age, like The Hundred years War (in Europe) continues for many more decades. But even if terror is eradicated, The Age of Terror will always remain a part of human history. 9/11 marks its beginning. Bush was ridiculed for having used the word ‘crusade’ at the time. It was an unfortunate choice but the fact remains that, as in the Crusades, the world (and not just the west as then) is now engaged in a war that seems to have no end in view.
To condemn 9/11 as an ‘overused’ word is, first, a failure to see the significance of the events heralded since then; secondly, it is to mistake an expression of real significance for a cliché.
Another word banned in the list issued by the university is decimate. The reason given in this case is that the word does not mean what most people today intend it to mean. Decimate comes from Latin and originally referred to the Roman practice of executing one man in ten of a mutinous legion. But its use to mean ‘wholesale destruction’ is not of recent origin.
It was there even in Fowler’s time. A population may be said to be decimated by a plague (Fowler, 1926). What Fowler objected to was extensions as in A single frosty night decimated the currants by as much as 80% where there is neither human volition nor are humans involved. But something close to this is now widely attested. The NODOE cites: Public transport has been decimated to illustrate the meaning ‘drastically reduce the strength or effectiveness of something.
The extension (as in the last quote) may still be debatable but no objection can be raised for not sticking to the sense of ‘one in ten’ of the Roman days.
But even those who accept the extended sense (‘wholesale destruction’) will shudder at this absurdity cited by Fowler. Dick, hotly pursued by the scalp-hunter, leaned in the saddle, fired, and literally decimated his opponent.
Contact the writer at ksyadurajan@yahoo.com
