This popped up unbidden, and I laughed as I remembered a really funny email trail. 1/n https://www.himalmag.com/trivial-pursuit/

Their shocked editor got me to change my chosen phrase to Resident Asshole. I had said Resident Chuth, and he said ushoo, our readers will die, I have to insist. I said, I don't mind at all. 2/n

In Bangalore Cantt slang, chuth actually is asshole. I discovered in advanced boyhood, to my surprise, that it might mean other parts in other languages. The meaning I knew probably is a contraction of the compound word soothamattai, which meant butt. 3/n

Soothamattai is a fascinating compound, because it contains the Skt. derived term for touch, and eventually began to express problems with the necessity of having to touch the region, which is when it becomes a term of abuse. I am fascinated by this...4/n

...for it looks like a prescription that doubles back on itself to become a proscription. Don't know if this touch/don't touch thing abides in its other meaning. Equally fascinating is how the old Dravidian word for touch--theendu/theettu--finds form... 5/n

as the word for the time when a woman is on her period in some Tamizh-speaking castes, and becomes the word for shit in Malayalam. So I put all this in a mail to good old Gadgil, the editor, who dd not seem particularly overjoyed by these linguistic curiosities. Ah, well... 6/n

Wish I'd said what was really on my mind. That Quizzing is permanent entertainment because it attracts Savarna man-babies uncorking their petulance like it's a vintage you should pay to sniff. Compounding the entertainment are the well-behaved man-babies who will keep quiet 7/n

while the asshole puckers and unpuckers, but will later WhatsApp each other snide-blossoms about who was crossing the line. Endless entertainment for free.