Sunday, September 26, 2004

If not for the swear words

Think of one of those days when things do not go right for you. The code you are working seems to have a bug, a minor one, which you have not been able to figure out inspite of ploughing the code several times all day long. You accidentally deleted a file that took hours to prepare and retrieving it is not possible. You realize that you have a meeting at 2:00pm and your watch shows 2:45pm. All the analysis you have carried out does not make sense since you made a wrong assumption in the beginning two days ago. You are waiting at the bus stop in the rain and all the buses arrive except for yours. At the end of such a frustrating day what do you need so that the entropy that has accumulated in you over the day evaporates. Is it a cup of refreshingly hot coffee or a bottle of ice cold nimbu soda? Nah ... say aloud a four letter swear word of your choice and all the angst comes out of your mouth along with the four letters. You begin to feel lighter, as your mind does not feel claustrophobic any more.


We have know this for quite some time especially with Bollywood showcasing different styles of swearing. "Kuttey" seems to be the favorite of bollywood. For example when Dharmendra shouts "Kuttey kaminey mein tera khoon peee jaoonga", we can feel the tension evaporating out of us. Our hatred for the villain seems to decrease considerably. Swearing/shouting loudly seems to do good for the health of a person who is in a state of anxiety/stress. The usage of swear words for this purpose differes from person to person. I would have loved to mention some of the interesting swear words which people use when disappointed, but for the sake of decency in the blog. People talk of laughing clubs and yoga as a means for stress control. But I would say swearing is also an effective tool. Now I am not sure if this happens only with me.

Way back in 1992, when I was in class 5, preparing for history exams was a daunting task. I would forget what I had learned an hour earlier. Also, uploading so much information into my little brain was very taxing. So I used to take a tumbler and shout into it. Now the shouting was to get rid of my frustration and the tumbler was to contain the noise. This is how I discovered shouting as an effective stress-control medium. Of late, I have a feeling that listening to loud music also may be a stress-control mechanism.

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