I pride myself on never using swear words. Once I wrote a satirical story about a politician who was a real a*** hole, but instead of having to resort to asterisks for the word, I stated that it rhymed with ‘mass soul’. I have used the four-letter word once or twice in my novels and short stories, simply because its use, in a description of a lively exchange at a noodles stall between a trishaw pedaller and the madam of the town’s brothel, was necessary to capture the earthiness of the encounter.

But not long ago, I used a whole barrage of swear words, not for literary, but cathartic effect—I simply had to discharge a pent-up rage. As I watched a TV program on the infamous Bernie Madoff scam, I found myself hurling imprecations at the hateful face, shocking myself with the uncharacteristic vehemence. I had been following, with increasing outrage, each news report of possibly the greatest scam in the history of the world, whereby a self-styled investment guru and respected member of the community, had been systematically cheating thousands of people, over decades, of no less than 50 billion dollars.

It wasn’t the incredibly huge sum of the fraudulence that had made me lose my cool and swear at the fraudster. It wasn’t the smiling insouciance with which he faced the world, a man whose gently waving silver hair, open countenance and reassuring avuncular style had duped even the shrewdest investors.

It was the devastation that he had wrought in the lives of ordinary people, including elderly couples hoping to spend their last years in secure, happy retirement. I watched on TV some of the devastated lives being played out: a woman in her seventies who had lost everything and who now hoped to make a living making costume jewellery, a man who was able to build his dream home after a lifetime of waiting, only to have to sell it. I also read about the French investor who had invested his clients’ savings in the Madoff scheme, and who committed suicide out of shame for having failed them.

Would I have been sparing with the expletives if Madoff had been remorseful? Probably. But he went jauntily to jail, up till the very end still trying to siphon off his ill-gotten gains to family members.

Following his jail sentence, there was a TV programme which emphasized the magnitude of the greed in terms of what the stolen 50 billion could have done to save the world: it could have fed all the poor, starving children in Africa for the rest of their lives, it could have eradicated all the diseases in the underdeveloped countries, it could have saved millions from AIDS, it could have……

I had by this time used up my entire vocabulary of swear words.

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About Vignettes...

A continuing flow of little, readable pieces that will constitute what I feel is an important 'legacy of values' to leave behind. Read more about Vignettes...