Naresh Ramchandani

0:06Hello he here all right thank you so much Owen for asking you see here we met after in da bar in da ba in Java indaba and we had a great chat about words over a cup of tea and a cinnamon bun I think and Owen we have a good word nerd conversation where we were talking about our favorite words and then Owen suggested that I could come here and talk about some of my favorite words to you.

0:33So it's great to be it's great to be speaking somewhere cool to cool people so hello so these are some words about me narration ram to end our new your words lay my name I guess Londoner Indian parent average guitar player and writer I mean I'm a writer and these are some of the words I've written I've written lots and lots of words but these are some of the ones some campaigns and charity that I helped to found and etc etc and in all the time I've been writing I think I've developed a fate you know set of favorite words like favorite children and I just wanted to talk to you about three of them today so first word home.

1:41So the Oxford English Dictionary defines home as the place where one lives permanently especially as a member of a family or household a fixed place of residence so that's not a bad definition but for me it's kind of just a little bit it's kind of just a bit too English it's kind of a bit stifled I think it's sort of a bit reluctant to a moat because I think home as a word just emotes so readily you know it's four letters kind of forming four walls around the safe space in which all image nakedness and love and argument and privacy and sociability can all kind of spread their kind of mess over this sort of slightly sanitized definition because home is so emotional I think home is lying in bed when you're a child and hearing your parents voices kind of muffled from the kitchen below and knowing that here everything is safe Oh home is home is getting up super early and knowing exactly where to put your feet so you don't activate the creaky floorboards that would wake up your partner and wake up your partner's Roth and home is your home is your daughter not getting into the college she was hoping to get it get into and sitting next to her on our bed and putting your arm around her and telling her without words that here in time everything will be fine or home is coming back to the place you live after being away and finding it perfectly clean or totally you know thrillingly buzzy suddenly buzzy or or wonderfully messy compared to where you've been as you come back home. And in the middle of home the place where you feel most at peace so going to show my age now country road take me home homeware my thoughts are waiting silently for me stuff of poems and the stuff of songs but not quite the stuff of cliche because I think home is something that we all feel and we all feel intense pleasure when we have it.

3:45And intense pressure or stress when we don't have it which is why we take our homes and we guard them with them you know the window locks and chains and alarms it's why I think the story of all those millions of Syrians fleeing looking crossing Europe looking for home I think is universally affecting I think it touches us all. And it's why I think the route the recent rise of nationalism in this country you know it shone through you Kip and its successes in the election last year and even the brexit debate now I think is like a ghost from the past for me a kind of a middle-class roast potato version of the go home rage that I had to endure as a child growing up in britain where some people wore their hatred just a little bit too openly you know your favorite my favorite words come and my favorite word's go but home has always been one of them with its sort of simple shape and it's very straightforward sound but the university human idea I think it represents so home.

4:45That's the first word second word thetic attic netic athletic so as a rule I try not to be unpleasant to people it just it's just such a bad idea on so many ways I mean unpleasantness demeans the person you're being unpleasant to it in multiple ways it makes them feel either stupid or her or betrayed or violently vengeful are all of those things. And I think it sort of it demeans you in so many ways as well it makes you feel sort of snobbish or snappish or patronizing or petty or just a giant jerk all those things so just generally being unpleasant people is not a good idea.

5:46But there are some moments where you just can't help it when when when you're confronted by the unfathomable idiocy or staggering selfless selfishness or someone and what happens is that the kind of snarky part of you gets the better of the gandy part of you and your and you were deliciously but wrongly compelled to tell the other person exactly what you think of them and that is when you need the greatest put down known to humankind english language put down there to humankind that were pathetic so let's take the word pathetic and will slow it down so you can see what a brilliant you know what a brilliant job this word does so pathetic starts with 0 puts out a withering putt right the lip kind of sneering and curling into a shape of utter disdain but right.

6:38So after that sort of magnificent lead comes the intellectual Center the Greek bit the ancient Greek bit p else ok.

6:45So I'm behind them I find faith us so even if you don't know what the word pathos means you think they're you suspect there's something really clever at work here the behind the insult people like socrates and aristotle are eating olives and sort of shaking their heads and laughing at your general hopelessness and if you do know what paid those means it's worse because you know you know you're now pitied by the whole of humankind and then after the intellectual center of the word comes the final flourish the ick part the ick pathetic you're spitting in the receivers face you know it's a spray a subtle or not so subtle spray the leaves its victim your victim feeling utterly humiliated so it's this combination of style and sophistication together that make pathetic tower above every other kind of insult there is known to humankind so compared to compared to the melodramatic put downs like awful or appalling or diabolical pathetic has consummate style effortless style existing in the word in the world of a Chanel number five and vogue cigarettes and pressed linen suits and cufflinks and compared to the melodramatic put downs like unacceptable or not good enough my team like a lot pathetic had she has carries true the stain because it makes you feel if your core pathetic it makes you feel like you've committed a monumental cock-up the slime I'll fed by your ineptitude and laziness and I think compared to the single suitable disses you dick you you ass pathetic has real weight I mean these kind of these things are kind of light they're easy to kind of brush off but when someone calls you pathetic you know that they studied you forever and really thought about it before coming to the inescapable conclusion that you or your work utterly worthless so however it's used them whenever it's used pathetic is I think the h-bomb of the English language and leaves its receiver with little dignity and even less chance of finding any soon I mean it's so bad I think that I haven't used the word for I don't know decades two decades 20 years.

9:14But it's nice to know when that when it's time to be unpleasant to people I've got a word as fabulously foul as pathetic at my disposal we got time for third third word sir maybe so give you a little autobiographical here so when I was younger I wanted certainty that's what I wanted in my life I wanted my judgment to be quick than absolute on any subjects I came across whether it was about art or music or film or current affairs or friendship I wanted to be able to say yes or no or right or wrong or absolutely or Never or good or bad about anything I came across and not just say it but be heard to say it pronouncing wherever possible in the mistaken hope that my cleverness + speed would dazzle in short oh no for example did the Pixies invent grunge by themselves absolutely of course they did you know do good parents ever divorce never is the wasteland by TS Eliot a significant poem it's the greatest poem ever written in short I was an opinionated ass who used the word maybe around I would say less than a dozen times in my first 25 years on this planet and so imaginary therapists so imagine there's an imaginary therapist do you think you wanted to deal in bolshie certainties because you were a young man whose main concern was impressing people absolutely not imaginary therapist do you think perhaps then let me put it another way do you think perhaps that the opposite of certainty which is doubt struck II was a weakness me yeah maybe maybe the April birds and the maybes all there in a garden the possibilities that I learned to see as I became less young a garden separated from a room where everything is known by a door and the door can be slammed shut by a yes or a no or an absolute or left open by a maybe allowing you to step out of this room where you no everything into space where you can explore and find something perhaps new you know is it possible that poetry for example is not in terminal decline but it is alive and as vibrant and culturally relevant as ever or more so because of rappers like like Kanye or Canaan you know maybe you know or is it possible that a generation who are born natural to social media or for whom social media is not even second nature but first nature that they do not represent a cause for worry but they're a genuine evolution of the species you know is it pot is it possible and the answers maybe I'll say maybe you know may two syllables of two letters each pivoting around the fifth letter Y like a set of scales in no hurry to come down on one side or the other in no hurry to judge and with no anxiety about looking weak because thinking things through is not weak it's strong and taking your time to decide is good it's fine it's strong and it's far stronger than dealing in dealing out bolshie opinions or being too certain too soon so maybe is not the easiest word to say but as I've become less young I like that euphemism it's become easier to say and it's perhaps and this become perhaps or maybe my favorite word of all so those are three words that I really like I like loads of words actually there's a whole bunch more so if anyone wants a really really really long talk I can come.

13:33And I can come and do that.

13:34But I guess what all of these words are is there am I so is there an appeal there an appeal for us to think about the language we use and where possible to think about each and every word because each and every word has the power to mean so much and do so much thank you very much you