Poetry in motion!

We were talking about greenhouse gases and the depletion of the ozone layer and I explained to my daughter that cattle, by the simple exercise of rumination and burping contributed to methane production, which was a greenhouse gas and trapped the heat on our planet. My son said, "not just burping, even farting." He added slyly, "Mum has a role in the evolution of greenhouse gases." The nerve of my firstborn to make such disrespectful, if true statements!

But because he couched it by using the Tulu word for farting, it didn't sound bad. It even sounded affectionate.

I am convinced that vernacular languages have a poetic twist. It's so easy to talk of bodily functions as if one were describing one's day in the park

The Tulu word for fart is pooki. Which is such a lovely sound. You have to pucker up your lips to say it, almost as if you were making the sound that a turd makes when honking for right of way. But it doesn't sound obscene or unmentionable in any way. 

Growing up, during summer vacations, I was surrounded by crazy aunts and uncles- who were politically as incorrect as possible to be. There would be endless discussions on whose red colour underwear had been put on display because someone had carelessly crossed her legs and her skirt had ridden up. We all learnt at a young age to be very careful because you never knew when you became target practice.

The source for this descent into the never-ending black hole that passed for humour, was my grandmother, who frequently spouted proverbs that translated into English, sounded not only vulgar but grotesque. One that comes to mind, roughly translated, states: the jobless artisan (basically bored) chopped off the baby's bum.

But in Tulu, it all sounds like poetry. There is a certain sing-song cadence in the way we speak even other languages as if we have carried over our musicality into them. You can spot a native Tulu speaker a mile away. 

Unfortunately, the humour also gets passed on by our dominant genes. A friend (not) told me I should never have procreated and should have ended the bad jokes genes with me. He was lamenting that now it's passed on to my son, whose friends would languish from the burden of having to laugh at his really bad jokes. But such is life. We never said it has to be easy for those around us. 

But if you were to learn Tulu maybe you would find the poetry in our humour.