Foreign Words

There are some foreign words that just capture shit. I have a list here of three words from three different languages that I constantly use and love. 

Schadenfreude: This is a German word. I learned it from the seriously cute and sharp-witted comedian Trevor Noah. It describes that feeling you have when you delight in someone else’s misery. As of 25th March 2025, after the drug bust of a local entrepreneur, a very apt word to describe the mood of Mizo netizens, feels like. Which, by the way, was the random muse that inspired this blog.

Mendokusai: This is a Japanese word. I learned it from Atu who is my Go To for all things Japanese. My favourite rendition of it is by Nyanko Sensei in his Madara form, from Natsume Yujinchou. It is the same as the Mizo “AVBT”. For those who don’t speak Mizo, the very tame English word for it is “troublesome”, the exclamation of it probably being, “what a bother!” or more colourfully: for fuck’s sake. Captures the essence, doesn’t it?

Maya: This is Sanskrit for illusion. It recalls the great sages of India who refer to this world as such. An illusion. Of the cosmic variety. The most famous representation of Maya in popular culture is possibly The Matrix, where people are unaware of their true selves and their true reality and are wrapped up instead in a grand illusion. Delusion, perhaps. For those who can see past this veil of reality that obscures the true face of the self and the universe, greatness and a sense of peace possibly, is possible. Maya relates to Brahma, the Creator. In that all things are One. To think of yourself as anything different from the Universe is a lie. Because anything that takes you away from this Union with God is Maya. Illusion. Beautiful.

If you want to start adding them into your lexicon, be my guest. Just memorise the spellings and Google for the pronunciations.

The Titanic

First of all, what a news! It was so unexpected to hear about a Titanic related death in 2023. Who would have ever conceived that a hundred plus years after the Titanic sank (so famously they made a movie out of it!), the same Titanic, sitting in the bottom of the ocean, would still lure and cause the death of humans? Not me, for sure.

But here we are. The allure of the Titanic has clearly not abated. Possibly enhanced, to be honest. Perhaps precisely because of how unattainable it still is. To this day. The romance is not dead.

In June 2023, twenty-six years after the second movie on the Titanic, and a hundred and eleven years after the actual Titanic sank, the Titanic claimed five more lives. Rich lives. Again. Well, wealthy, at any rate.

The saddest part about this tragedy was that this time round, people just aren’t mourning the deaths as much as they are shaking their heads even as they do mourn the loss of life. How very unfortunate. How extremely suffocating and frightening their last moments would have been. How incredibly disastrous this voyage. But also... how very avoidable!

I think a lot of people are feeling a sense of schadenfreude about the immensely wealthy folks and the daring they have with the money they possess. It’s coming off like them trying to feel alive because they just have so much money. I mean none of us know which way and how life is going to fuck us up, but this just seems like one of those situations which people can only get into because they have so much money and it just comes off as sad but... well, there is a but.

I think many times, the very moneyed folks are so used to buying what they want that it becomes second nature to them, that they start to reason that things can’t be that bad or can’t hurt them that much because money will bail them out. It’s like how Trevor Noah’s mum said she never gets sick so she pulled out her insurance and then she got shot and he’s like: well, mum, guess what you didn’t think of? Bullets.

I saw memes about how immigrants lives are lost at sea and people only think, well we need to tighten security, but when five millionaires’ lives are at stake, the world watches it. George Orwell continues to be right: some animals are more equal than others. There are the macabre humorous reflections like: those that refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

For my part, I think The Titanic is cursed. WBU?