A Few Borrowed Words

(Introduction to my latest book of poetry 'A Few Borrowed Words')

Do you recollect an instance when you met a person, found a place, or felt a surge of emotions, and realised there should have been a word specifically for that? Well, if you pay slight attention, you might find many such scenarios on an average day!

For example, how about the impossibly blue clear skies on a summer’s afternoon? Or that strong smell of crushed pine or basil that almost instantly calms you down? How about the staccato sound of rain on roof? Or something as simple as the taste of cold water when you are immensely exhausted or parched? As for people, remember that friend or avuncular kinsman who is always available as a foundational source of support? Or that person who always lights you up, in all circumstances – and no, this is beyond love. As an artist, I would even add the elation of being able to complete a piece of work to one’s satisfaction (the opposite is equally relevant).

And yes, there are also those instances on the darker side -  brooding emotions that are harbingers of melancholy – that intense feeling when you feel like breaking down to vent your grief, that feeling of self-empathy or even pity when you realise even your best is not good enough, or even those instances when you know you have to drag to the end only so that you can close that chapter, to be able to start a new one…

There is no dearth of these moments and also, the lack of a linguistic label for the same. English, despite its largesse of absorbing words from other languages, often falls short in describing these sharp situations – but it is an ever-growing realm, and writers often have the poetic licence to freely choose from other languages and add it to the lexicon. Exactly what the Oxford Dictionary does each year! These are the so-called ‘Untranslatable’ words.

For this anthology, I have gone to these very untranslatable words for inspiration – words from around the world that pack with them very peculiar and often unforgettable emotions that cannot be unseen once you are aware of them. I often find in them, a burst of vocabular freshness - to be able to ponder on minute, everyday things that were made special with a coin termed for itself, because someone someday introspected deeply on the subject, despite its insignificance. Whatever their meaning, they seem like tiny beacons of syllabic sanguinity because anything, anywhere can one day become a term for use in everyday parlance.

In today’s world, while all languages are delivering these neologisms in plenty, a few seem to be standing out particularly Japanese. Perhaps it symbolises the world catching up with its cultural richness. Japanese culture, like a lot of other east Asian cultures is always a source of immense curiosity and crispness. I personally feel that it is also a reflection of the heightened sense of mindfulness that is emphasized in its everyday life, that has resulted in focusing on the obscure, the tiny and the unobtrusive, leading to a deluge of words which we hardly even think of. Imagine a word for just the sunlight filtering through leaves on a sunny day (‘komorebi’, one of my personal favourites), or the practice of walking in a forest to rejuvenate yourself (‘shinrin-yoku’), or the humbling fact to accept circumstances beyond one’s control (‘shogonai’). I do agree that often, much gets lost in translation – yet, the fact remains that literateurs have over the centuries coined something relatively close to focus on cursory objects of everyday life.

I do agree that anyone particularly versed in a language may choose to differ from the meaning, and the inspiration in the lines I have written in this anthology. I will accept it as artistic freedom to pursue that higher goal, laced with mindfulness, where you are set to paint a blank canvas with the colours of whatever it is, that has inspired you. In this case, it is the magnanimity of the untranslatable, the joy from a bouquet of a few borrowed words….

May 2025

(P.S. If you stumble upon one of these words yourself, or are already aware of its everyday use, don’t hesitate to send the same to me – it might inspire me to write a sequel!)