जूठा

During presentations, workshops & lectures, I keep sipping water from a bottle to prevent mouth and throat dryness due to the talking.

Sometimes, at the end of a session, as students approach me, often, someone or the other picks up my bottle and drinks from it.

Though I do not react overtly, but I avoid drinking from that bottle thereafter!

The concept of joothha is clearly culture specific. In Hindi there is a word for it, but there may not be an exact equivalent in other languages (in Bangla, it is aithho). I can’t think of an exact equivalent in English that has all the associations that come with joothha.

If there is no word for it in a culture, the concept doesn’t exist there, impacting how people react to it differently.

Just the presence or absence of the word changes how you see drinking from the same bottle – disgusting? An act of bonding, love? Or a non event?

Fascinating isn’t it? Would the world be a better place if some words that evoke negativity did not exist?

If you could go back in time and delete one word from existence, which one would it be?