The word speaks!

Since the first cry of human beings occurred a very long time ago, there are certain logical boxes that need inspection. Who let out the first cry - newborn, toddler, child, adult and which gender?  Who tutored it- nature, animals or birds? Did the cry was pre-recorded in the building blocks of the human being? In the absence of a definite clue, the un-ticked logic boxes point to unknown origins and baffle today’s perspective.

Countless millennia ago, the first human cry split the air on this planet earth. It became an audio-word. Like "doctors sans frontiers" it was a word without alphabets. With focus only on survival – hunting and gathering food or defending against enemies, the early inhabitants stopped with what today we call as phonics!  Guided by evolutionary pressure, they jumped the alphabet queue to invent verbal-verbs, combining sound and hand signals. In this fashion, human beings and their rudimentary vocabulary of audio-words evolved. Many millennia later, they tried their hands in pictorial representations.  With no pressure to explicitly bring out their socio-cultural leanings, the seeds to grow a nascent crop of alphabets took some time to plant.

The labour of countless minds, hands and assorted writing mediums- from granite to papyrus, resulted in crude forms of alphabets.  Probably, thinking that a group might stand a good chance of survival, with bargaining power, they devised a clever scheme - vowels and consonants. This grouping gave them a choice to choose an article as a friend to (usher) lead them.

Still afraid of the unknown, the alphabets decided to combine in as many random ways as possible to live in safety. This cocktail of alphabets, in any language, gave birth to words. Then, its life got a little complicated as dictated by etymology, spelling and phonics. Sensing the danger of having limited utility as a verb or noun or number, the stand-alone words decided to admit pronouns, adjectives, adverbs into their fold. Imaginatively, they added many hyphenated words and even bent their backs to get contracted, abbreviated as acronyms and initials or ‘clipping’ to increase their utility value.  Acquiescing to be governed by syntax, grammar; they opted for a group defense strategy!

At this point, there was no other choice except walking through the gates marked – 1st, 2nd and 3rd person, and degrees of comparison and gender indicators, idioms and phrases, punctuation marks and so on to become a sentence- simple, complex and compound! What could they do? These rules governing the formation of sentences infringed upon their freedom, but did they not find safety now!

The newly minted sentences marveled at the transformation and happy to have punctuation marks for company, which are powerful enough to stop them in their stride. After stocking and packing these essentials, the journey of sentences began with -beginners and masters, toddlers and teachers, poets and professionals. The words are proud to be associated with the works of professionals – everyday they come out with acronyms!Looking back, from the first cry to this day, the growth of their vocabulary has taken phenomenal. They are eagerly waiting with hope for someone to coin a new word to express their light-year wide smile! The word had no way to guess that foreign words might have infiltrated or some of its own might have done the same!

Though shackled with many constraints, they have found a way to put the gag order on the user. There are etiquettes governing their usage. It is the ingenious tale of twisting the tail and taming the tiger! The written or spoken words are ticking bombs primed to go. The word power gets unleashed, limited only by the imaginative way they are used. The once powerless words now could wield power; emotionless words describing bravery and cowardice, joy and sadness, hope and despair, compassion and cruelty and go histrionic to leave a reader in tears. If used without weighing the consequences - differences become conflicts; a glib talk to deceive in deceit; a war cry leading to destruction and despair. A Container gives shape to liquids; thoughts and language are shaped by the user.

Unwittingly, the early humans might have anticipated this potential hazard and happily conducted their survival business with only the phonics! It seems that the first cry has fallen into deaf ears!

Everyone is the hero in his/her story. The word is a hero in everyone's story.  The first words came from wilderness and today we will be in wilderness without words!