Over the years a phrase has made its presence felt in my life in various forms and adaptations. If ‘what the hell’ was an expression of everything from awe to anger when I was young and scared of being boxed in the ears if I used a more serious profanity ‘what the bloody hell’ was a graduation of sorts.

So when I saw a daring phrase like ‘what the f@#k’ being reduced to an abbreviation, all I could ask was WTF.

I felt that the expressive potential of phrases beginning with ‘what the’ were being trivialised and in the process were losing their bite.

I knew I was the last one qualified to complain. After all I had argued with my father many years ago that Bastard was actually a term of endearment. But still I felt a kind of a loss when I saw the slow but definite marginalisation of the universal cuss phrase.

And then when the internet exploded with jokes about how after Monday and Tuesday even the week says WTF I thought things had fallen as low as they possibly could. But FM (no not the Finance Minster) taught me that there was a low point that was lower than low.

One of the RJs (Congrats to him BTW) came up with the phrase ‘What the Pulihora’.

And the phrase went on to become a super duper hit. Prompting me to say ‘What the Pulihora’. Prompting my kids to start with a smirk and a sneer but end it with a smile.

Pulihora is Tamarind Rice. A dish made often for festivals and celebrations. How it became a word that politely substituted for the offensive F word is beyond my imagination and understanding. But popular it did become. And became part of normal parlance.

So Sharukh thinks he can take on the Big B. What the Pulihora. So they want a separate Telangana State. What the Pulihora. So BCCI thinks they can bully ICC. What the Pulihora. The usage multiplied and the phrase discovered a life of its own.

I realised that the attraction the phrase now held stemmed from the fact that no longer did we need to couch our words and sentences with asterisks and at the rate of symbols. The P word was safe and extremely polite. Not even my grandmother could object to it. So the kids started running around chanting ‘What the Pulihora’ without any fear of being pulled up. So the students knew that they couldn’t be punished for uttering the word.

Amazing. Amazing how an expression of utmost anger has been reduced to an item on the menu. I now sit waiting for my old aunts or my aged mother in law to look at something mildly objectionable and saying under their breath ‘What the Pulihora’. And blushing, just in case some of us had overheard them.