The sound of words and music

Satish K Sharma

IT is not too often that a word lover comes across a term which she can take fancy to instantly. But when it happens, the experience is sublime. You hear the word, roll it upon your tongue, savour its music, and park it at a convenient recess of the mind for easy retrieval, so that you can use it again and again.

My earliest such experience was with ‘khulja simsim’. I was 8 or 9 years old and reading the story of Alibaba and Forty Thieves in Hindi. When I came upon the phrase, I found it so fascinating that I kept repeating it till it became an earworm. The expression comprising of two words of two rhythmic syllables each — da-da da-da — seemed to open the locks of my mind in two quick turns.

Two years later, one day in science class, I heard the word ‘eureka’. I loved it as much for itself as for the situation of its invocation. Imagine a buoyed up Archimedes wearing nothing but a beard, running down a street of Athens shouting ‘Eureka! Eureka!’

The Greek expression is made of three neat syllables — ‘eu’, ‘re’, and ‘ka’, like ‘Do-re-mi’! Could any other word express the joy of a sudden discovery more musically? I took such liking to this word that when I first heard the RD Burman song, ‘Monica... O my darling’, I wondered why the lyricist did not use ‘eureka’ instead of Monica, which could have conveyed the exultation on finding one’s beloved way better.

It brings me to a word which has become my favourite recently — recuse. I didn’t know such a word existed until it came to appear frequently in the media. Let’s not discuss the context but recuse, which seems like the innocent child of father ‘Refuse’ and mother ‘Excuse’, has positive traits of both, and baggage of neither.

While ‘refuse’ is offensive and ‘excuse’ submissive, ‘recuse’ is neither. You can question a refusal, but no one can raise a finger against recusal. Similarly, whereas ‘excuse’ is loaded with guilt, ‘recuse’ sits on one’s conscience with the lightness of a feather. Indeed, there is a touch of genius about this simple word. The creator of the word has stitched together three consonants, with equal number of vowels with such ease that the word that comes to mind is, convenience!

So next time you find yourself in a sticky situation, like being forced to take a stand in an argument between your spouse and son, don’t refuse, or excuse yourself. Just utter three magical words, ‘I recuse myself’, and walk away with a straight face.