As perhaps the world’s leading proponent and promoter of the Indian cuss word chutiya and all its derivatives, it gladdens my heart immensely to know that it enjoys currency among Wall Street types too. It is particularly gratifying that it has made the august pages of Newsweek.
In what reads like an unintended puff piece, Suketu Mehta writes in Newsweek/Daily Beast about the high profile hedge fund investor Raj Rajaratnam, who was recently sentenced to 11 years for insider trading.
While describing the inner dynamics of that world Mehta mentions the equation between between Rajaratnam and Anil Kumar, a senior partner at McKinsey & Company, who pleaded guilty to insider trading as part of the same investigation that got Rajaratnam. The two were friends once but fell out since Kumar turned government witness against Rajaratnam.
Mehta reports: “Rajaratnam does not speak well of Kumar. He calls him a choot—Hindi for “c--t.” “I’m not Indian, but that word fits him,” he says.
That’s the beauty of the word. It fits all men at some point or another in their lives. I have written about the word before in the not so august columns of this blog. In a post about a particularly peppy commercial in April last year I had said this, and I (pompously) quote myself:
“Chutiya, which began as a street invective in India, is in my book now a profoundly literary expression whose breadth and depth, and indeed effect, is unmatched by any other word. The word is derived from chut meaning cunt. Although the English equivalent is used to describe a contemptible person, in Hindi it can mean any number of things in any number of situations depending on how you intone it.
I have a friend who thinks he can get a PhD in chutiyapa since he has studied the use of the expression in different social situations for decades. That story, some other time. But chutiya broadly means a combination of a dunce, dumbass, contemptible, irritating, ridiculous, jerk, foolish person. I can expand the list much more but you get the drift.”
The word in this particular context effectively captures the intensity of Rajaratnam’s antipathy towards a man whom he once called a friend. This is particularly because Rajaratnam is Sri Lankan and is obviously not accustomed to using the cuss word as a matter of routine, which can only mean that he had to plumb the depths of his contempt for Kumar.
Oh! The joys of overanalyzing.
