Gujarati or Hindi, such as
bhenchod
(sister-fucker),
madarchod
(mother-fucker),
gadhero
(donkey), and
buckwaas
(bullshit), but his command of English profanity was less sure-footed. More often than not he would end up stringing together the wrong words: “I am shitting on you” or “I will fuck your shit” or “Bloody shit damn.” It would just make us laugh, which was clearly not the reaction he was attempting to elicit. Sometimes he would just shorten it to “shit damn,” which means even less. You wouldn’t really call someone a “shit damn,” though I suppose there could be such a thing as an actual shit dam that keeps a river of shit from flooding a nearby town. Perhaps my father was referring to the great shit dam that lays somewhere out in the American West, an ecological eyesore where he intended to throw the lawn mower he was yelling at, or where he would like to send my sister and I when we used up all the hot water and he was forced to begin his day shivering naked under what felt like the receiving end of an ice cold shit dam.
In spite of all that, I had never seen him swear in front of his customers or his colleagues. During all the years that he stood behind the counter at his newspaper shop or grocery store back in England, cursed out by drunken skinheads and called a Paki and a wog and told to go back to his country on a daily basis, he never shouted back at them. Perhaps after they had left he called thembastards or
gadheros
, but only once they were out of hearing distance. Even after coming to America, when he and my mother would travel up and down the East Coast selling cheap Indian costume jewelry on the flea market circuit, he kept his cool. Often, because of their brown skin and exotic clothing, customers assumed they couldn’t speak English and would speak to them like they were deaf children.
“WHAT IS YOUR NAME?” they would scream.
“Fatima and I speak English,” my mother would reply, attempting to head off any misunderstanding or embarrassment.
The customers would look relieved and say something like, “Well, good for you. So many other Mexicans won’t learn the language.”
In spite of all this, I never heard my father lose control. This was, of course, in large part due to the fact that my mother was incredibly charming and a master salesperson. She could, with a disarming joke delivered with a self-deprecating laugh, get even the nastiest redneck to buy jewelry his wife would never wear, while simultaneously convincing him he might learn something by reading the Koran. This made it possible for my father to bite his tongue and sit quietly as my mom’s second fiddle, telling himself that if he ever did say what he thought, he would go too far, say too much, and more important than losing his dignity or my mother’s patience, he would commit the greatest act of sabotage and lose a customer.
So it was ironic that after twenty years of living in this country, during which time he ran several failed business ventures including an import-export business, an auto paint shop, and a multilevel marketing business, my father found himself having to use the English language as his primary tool when he took a job as a customer service rep. He used to joke that he would be perfect for thejob: After living with my mother for more than three decades he had become an expert at listening to people complain. Truthfully, it was the most relaxed he had been in many years. He seemed glad to be away from the expectations and stress of owning a business, and he was content to be a voice on the other end of the telephone, a problem solver. He had never really had a penchant for business; his talents would have been far better suited to being a doctor, or a mechanic, a plumber, or even a musician. He actually taught himself how to play the harmonium and many times when I was in high school he would sit on the floor in the evenings, shirtless, his tanned belly hanging over his shorts like some
bhenchod
(sister-fucker),
madarchod
(mother-fucker),
gadhero
(donkey), and
buckwaas
(bullshit), but his command of English profanity was less sure-footed. More often than not he would end up stringing together the wrong words: “I am shitting on you” or “I will fuck your shit” or “Bloody shit damn.” It would just make us laugh, which was clearly not the reaction he was attempting to elicit. Sometimes he would just shorten it to “shit damn,” which means even less. You wouldn’t really call someone a “shit damn,” though I suppose there could be such a thing as an actual shit dam that keeps a river of shit from flooding a nearby town. Perhaps my father was referring to the great shit dam that lays somewhere out in the American West, an ecological eyesore where he intended to throw the lawn mower he was yelling at, or where he would like to send my sister and I when we used up all the hot water and he was forced to begin his day shivering naked under what felt like the receiving end of an ice cold shit dam.
In spite of all that, I had never seen him swear in front of his customers or his colleagues. During all the years that he stood behind the counter at his newspaper shop or grocery store back in England, cursed out by drunken skinheads and called a Paki and a wog and told to go back to his country on a daily basis, he never shouted back at them. Perhaps after they had left he called thembastards or
gadheros
, but only once they were out of hearing distance. Even after coming to America, when he and my mother would travel up and down the East Coast selling cheap Indian costume jewelry on the flea market circuit, he kept his cool. Often, because of their brown skin and exotic clothing, customers assumed they couldn’t speak English and would speak to them like they were deaf children.
“WHAT IS YOUR NAME?” they would scream.
“Fatima and I speak English,” my mother would reply, attempting to head off any misunderstanding or embarrassment.
The customers would look relieved and say something like, “Well, good for you. So many other Mexicans won’t learn the language.”
In spite of all this, I never heard my father lose control. This was, of course, in large part due to the fact that my mother was incredibly charming and a master salesperson. She could, with a disarming joke delivered with a self-deprecating laugh, get even the nastiest redneck to buy jewelry his wife would never wear, while simultaneously convincing him he might learn something by reading the Koran. This made it possible for my father to bite his tongue and sit quietly as my mom’s second fiddle, telling himself that if he ever did say what he thought, he would go too far, say too much, and more important than losing his dignity or my mother’s patience, he would commit the greatest act of sabotage and lose a customer.
So it was ironic that after twenty years of living in this country, during which time he ran several failed business ventures including an import-export business, an auto paint shop, and a multilevel marketing business, my father found himself having to use the English language as his primary tool when he took a job as a customer service rep. He used to joke that he would be perfect for thejob: After living with my mother for more than three decades he had become an expert at listening to people complain. Truthfully, it was the most relaxed he had been in many years. He seemed glad to be away from the expectations and stress of owning a business, and he was content to be a voice on the other end of the telephone, a problem solver. He had never really had a penchant for business; his talents would have been far better suited to being a doctor, or a mechanic, a plumber, or even a musician. He actually taught himself how to play the harmonium and many times when I was in high school he would sit on the floor in the evenings, shirtless, his tanned belly hanging over his shorts like some
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