"A Nothing about Debt"

Ok this is a sinful confession to make but I will go ahead and do it! I am awfully broke this month(by 13th?? phewwww!!!?!) and moreso because I am saving up 1000 bucks to pay my fine towards my attendance shortage....... Some life eh?? I am feeling pretty guilty about it (as ususal but more painfully now) because I had got 9 thousand rupees this month towards my expenses and justly but sadly had to pay off my debts to my ever helpful pal along with an array of shopkeepers whom I pay at the end of the month. So now apart from my house rent and the thousand bucks I have nothing left but a mere 200 rupees in my kitty. Its a vicious circle and its getting worse every month now... debt in one month, repayed next month and due to which debt in the same month and the ordeal continues.........

Sometimes I question myself (as if I am God!!) about the origin of the practice and concept of the word 'Debt' and the coinage of the term 'Intebted' and its various variations. This vice has been an integral part of my college life. My father- most blameless is he for having sent me the 'required' sum every month and i personally believe that the amount is fairly enough. Then where does this ever widening and pitless gyre called "extra need" lie? I havn't been able to figure that out although I have an incling that the abrupt and forceful spendthriftness on food is the root cause and the peaking bills at the cyber cafe!

Etymologically speaking, the word "debt" has been derived from Latin and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary says thus:- c.1290. from Old French. dete. Lat. debitam. "to owe", "keep something away from someone"! Sheeeshhhh!! Then again the lexicon had adviced to look up the meaning and etymology of the word "habit" (ironic or sarcastic?) and it read thus:- c.1225. from Old French. habit. from Latin. habitus. "condition, appearance, dress, demeanour". originally past participle of habere. "to have, to keep, to hold". base sense is 'to hold' which is either in offering or taking. Punishing man!!!!

So whenever a friend gives another a debt of honour, the debtor is actually holding the tangible article or even keeping it away from the rightful owner. English language is really very punishing sometimes, changing the the feeling of a friendly gesture to one of inferiority and even conviction. We among friends and loved ones put sooo many things in debt- feelings, promises, moist secrets, fun-times and even love(tumhara pyaar mere paas rahenga...phikr mat karo!!! boo hooo) but in actual sense of the word its a sort of ethical crime as the person in debt has actually robbed off the giver of something precious or even indispensible.

Feminists would definitely say that its a highly patriarchal word (debt) having its roots in the male concept of domination(refer to the lexicon explanations)n and snatching away something rightful from a seemingly 'weaker' counterpart (women). Even they might go to the extent of saying that it dates back to those days when infant males were taken away from mothers by the rulers men for training them in the arts of war. Likewise Sasuure would have explained the term in the light of semiotics and Derrida, Lyotard et al would have denounced it as a grand narrative.

When an authority in the language (read Merriam-Webster) relates the word to 'habit' then i suppose there is a lot of stigma attached to the concept. There can be two types:
a) The first one being debt as a perpetual habit of finding means to please ones habit of spendthrifness or other excesses
b) The second one is a more radical one saying that it possibly means owing to Darwins theory of Survival of the fittest, it can be described as an attempt to drain a person of his/for essential resources in order to sustain ones own life in its various connotations!! Morbid, utterly baseless.....


Well ok, I am sorry for having writen so much about nothing at all but just think, where would we be had it not been for the timely borrowings to save our existence in this world which runs like a locomotive driven by materialism? A mother giving away her child to a childless couple or a friend saving the life of another friends daughter or to speak in my terms where BJs contribution pulls me out of trying times, all these are forms of debt in some sense. So is English language baseless and worthy of the blame of fragmentising and frugalising feelings, emotions and life?? My loyalty says no but my being screams,"Maybe.... you bloody idiot- beings of a colonised culture!!" Its an irony that I am writing this in the very same language am sort of decapitating. Here I would take the help of Syed Amanuddin and Mahesh Dattani. The former says" I am a poet. For forty centuries I have lived under various names, I am now Amanuddin", and the latter saying, "Thats what I do." i.e. writing in English.

Well God, if you exist, why do we have to communicate in scripts or words and why isn't there any higher level of communication?!! Bah!! Some weird and foolish dream..........