Monday, January 02, 2006

Phyrds Uykl 33

This friday I made a startling discovery in the office. It was four pm and as usual I was busy battling with the printer to get a couple of important print-outs. After twenty minutes of pressing all the buttons on the printer and some on the adjoint shredder for good measure I was forced to call in the local IT expert. We gathered around the printer trying to make sense of the teeny two line LCD display and the absurd messages it flashed at two minute intervals. It was a rather newish HP printer that was loaded with the latest in cutting-edge customer friendly software which ensures "thousands of trouble-free printer outs". The IT expert soon smiled to himself and set to work. 'It takes a deft hand you know" he said, as he switched the printer off and then on again. After warming up for sometime it flashed "Paper Jam" quickly three times in quick succession, made a gleeful choking sound and then triumphantly went quite. The LCD display said, with a resounding look of self-satisfaction, "Phyrds Uykl 33". My IT expert confirmed that this was not one of the listed responses in the customer-friendly infomation booklet and may take some more time and effort to repair. I was frustrated, it was already 4:30 and I had to get that print-out or it would be the end of my weekend. In a fit of rage I asked him: "Kya fax machine kaam kar raha hai?..."

Silence settled on the office suddenly yet quietly, briefly reminding me of several occasions when the Non-veg Kebab platter was brought to the table at Tomatoes in Ahmedabad. But soon that memory faded when the IT expert turned to me and said. "Kar rahi hai..., Fax machine kaam kar rahi hai..." I was curtly reminded of the fact that in the Hindi language the Fax Machine, that block of pastic, electronics, and heavily miniaturised cd-changer full of assorted beeping noises, was indeed a female. I apologised and just to show that I had caught on, I sashayed over to her, the fax machine, and picked up one of the many pieces of paper in her inbox. I stood ramrod straight, looked out over the office full of expectant eyes and said "Yeh fax bahut acchi hai..." The ensuing rush of Tangdi Kebab memories meant I had goofed up again. Damn it!! I can never get Hindi...

It all begins many years ago. Back when i was just a kid with all the good looks, snappy wit and dreamy eyes I have today but a little less facial hair. Overhearing what my dad told the cabbie everyday I quickly picked up my first words of Hindi. "Doosre Parking sign se right lena". When I turned old enough to travel in a Cab on my own I confidently mouthed those words just after the cab went past the roundabout. Of course I never knew what they meant exactly. But having seen many Hindi movies I worked it out to mean, roughly of course, "please take me to that red building with the grocery shop on the front near the parking.". One friday evening coming back from a friend's birthday party the cabbie went the other way around the colony and I was put in a spot. I tried saying 'doosre parking se right lena' a couple of times in succession, but I was soon very lost and was subject to interesting Hindi from the cabby some of which I continue to decipher to this day. (An interesting usage involving "stupid kid", "large piece of wood', and "back side" haunts me in sleep sometimes...)

Ironically this did not mean I was bad in Hindi at school. Oh no no. On the other hand I did pretty good in the subject. My mother, quickly noted that I was languishing in the low "F"s in Hindi while even in Physical Education I was scoring commendable "middle-D"s. I was quickly put on a regime of daily one hour sessions of Hindi which involved committing to memory large tracts of Hindi poetry and prose, not even leaving out the merest of punctuation marks. It would go:yadda yadda yadda full stop, yadda, comma, yadda yadda exclamation mark. I was soon regurgitating my way into the statospheric high-Bs in Hindi. All this without understanding a word of what I was committing to memory. (Students out there should not try this yourself. Especially if your learning neurosurgery, nuclear detonation and stuff like that.) There were rude shocks to this strategy of course. Once, in a fit of uncalled for spontaneity, my Hindi teacher slipped in a short essay question into the half-yearly exam. To be written in, shudder, your own words.

For half an hour I watched, with loathing in my eyes, my hindi-speaking classmates hunched over whipping up paeans on the "Weather of your home state", or "The importance of science" depending on which one they chose. Finally I picked up my pencil and went for it. For the next two weeks, every Hindi class, I held my breath as the Hindi teacher walked in, hoping that she was not carrying a pile of thin pink test notebooks. One of those notebooks had a brief description of the rains of kerala in a language that was a melange of bad hindi, english and malayalam. All in devanagri script of course. Then one day she walked in with those books and there was much laughing, roaring of rips and loss of self esteem after that.

But there was no respite. I tried picking up bits and pieces from the weekly Hindi movie on TV but then how many 7th standard essays can you write with an assorted vocabulary of haraam zaades, khoon pee jaoonga and rishte me mein tere baap something something. (Though I did manage to once start an essay on domestic animals with the words "Duniya mein do tarah ke pashu hote hain, domestic and wild...")

And as the years went by things were getting difficult. In class 9th I begged my dad to let me shift to french. Everyone else in the school did, bar 10 or so people. And I was one of them. While the french guys gallivanted with their foreign textbooks and 95+ percent class averages we struggled with Subhadrakumari Chauhan and Harivanshrai Bacchan. Mind you I am sure the poetry was immaculate and the prose was stirring. The native hindi-speakers often rose in raptures when our teacher explained some of the finer points of some of the poems. I did understand some of the couplets by Kabeer and Tulsidas. Alas the inevitable happened, I flunked in Hindi. Out of a maximum possible 100 marks I had scored 16 in total. 8 marks came from some fill in the blank type question set and some true-or-false type questions.

This of course meant I needed to get private tuition. In hindsight Mr. Tripathi looked exactly like Amitabh Bhachchan in Bunty and Babli. He always wore Ray-bans, had that rustic charm around him and spoke English like a true Hindi teacher. "Next month fool reeveezun okay?" The first day he came he spoke to me non-stop about how he was trying to get a driving license and had been at it for years. In chaste Hindi. It was not a gentle baptism. By the end of the year I had learnt well. My hindi was ok, but my real skill was at listening to people and nodding my head at the just the right spots without understanding a single word. Tripathi sir got his license on the seventh attempt or so.

Of course its not all my fault you know. Hindi is a terrible language if your not tuned in well enough. There's that gender problem of course. Every bloody thing has to be male or female. Hindi-speakers do not enjoy the comfort of an ambiguous "it". Ask them how they know whats a "he" and whats not and they will just smile. Yes we mallus might speak like the babbling of a brook, but we know better than to make a coconut palm a he. Or a she. Dammit. (No but it has nuts jokes please.)

Then there is the merciless use of emphasis to add a little twist into an already infuriating language. How many mallus have been laughed at for downing a few drinks, raising there arms and singing out loud "Khajra Re" instead of "Kajra Re". Oh yes and we can never get enough of the "Hahahah he said KANA instead of KHANA..." little witticism. That pronounciation will be the end of me. I have often made my maid at home think she is a close male relation. She burns the dal when I do that.

But I think its all a huge conspiracy. A conspiracy to poke fun at non-natives. Otherwise why would have a perfect ek, do, teen, char, sade char, sade paanch system. And then screw it all up with dhed, dhai, savva and other hideous fractions. Only so that around lunch time in the office they can ask you the time and then grin and titter when you say saade ek. Those fractions can have no other purpose. Once I went all around Wadala market trying to flaunt my knowledge of dhed, savva, dhai and so forth. I was out buying vegetables but very soon it all fell apart. By the time I was done shopping I had enough provisions to cook a small bowl or two of rice, several tons of karela sabji with a kilo or two of salt thrown in. It was a disaster. But whenever I go back there is a sparkle in the eyes of them vendors. Especially the karela guy.

But according to me the greatest conspiracy of all is expressly meant to prevent mallus, tams, gults and the like from marrying into Hindi-speaking families. It is a move of ethnic-purity maintenance par excellence. In a flash of brilliance they have ensured that no sanity-loving young boy will ever woo a hindi-speaking maiden if he did not know the language himself. To ensure you never fit in, the Hindi language has created a puzzling array of terms for every possible relationship in the family. So by the time you are done meeting the Chacha, chachi, bhabhi, jija, nana, nani, kaka, dada, dadi, lala, mama, mami, potha, pothi, tau and of course the didi of devar fame, you no longer know who is married to whom and who fathered whom. Soon you are frothing at the mouth, your head is spinning and in a fit of confusion request your girlfriend for her second cousin's hand in marriage... master stroke I tell you... I once even called someone at a very hindi dominated wedding a "bhajji" by mistake. Thankfully they were not from Chennai and did not realize I was calling them deep fried vegetable in gram flour dough.

Aha. But try we must. The other day a Taxi driver incessantly harangued me for an hour from Bandra to Wadala in the purest, most passionate marathi. I nodded, sombrely hmmed and once, just past the Don Bosco church, laughed with him heartily at a particularly lewd joke. I never understood a single word of what he said. Tripathi had taught me well indeed. Anyways it is a working day and I must go now. As I once heartily proclaimed while leaving a friend's house in delhi, "Chalo mein ja rahi hoon..." Yes you can laugh now, haraam zaade... zaadi... zaada...Crap.

p.s. I have just been told my a close confidante that lala is not actually a bonafide Hindi relation. In place of that please read phoopha. No I am serious.

67 comments:

ash_rose said...

That was vantage sidin!

Welcome back dude ! can c this one becoming the next'travails...'...When it comes to commiserating with fellow southies, u zimply rock..!!

Shruthi said...

That was really good! Was wondering if you have really and truly vanished from the face of the earth!

Genders... ugh! :))

Thirty years back, my mom, just learning Hindi, made some really great bloopers:

When the vegetable seller told her that the coriander leaves cost Pacchees(25) paise (this was ages ago, remember) - she said, "Nahin, pachaas(50) paise mein dedo!!"
(She got the two mixed up, poor soul, and thought she was bargaining beautifully!). Thank God my father was around, else, the veg seller would have had a gala time.

Next, when a neighbour called her and asked her what she was doing, she answered "Main Bonda ban rahi hun" :) [I am becoming a Bonda]

Glad you are back, Sidin. Don't vanish again.

Aumkar Nur said...

Deadly piece of writing...as usual...
and the gap makes it all the more delicious...
keep it coming Sidin...or as they say in Punjabi...a language u dare not condemn."Aan de.."

Twilight Fairy said...

LOL! south indians arent the only ones with such confusions.. bongs too have a bad time with the gender and of course insert the 'au' sound in everything.

Through the Looking Glass said...

Welcome back dude!
Good new year treat from you! :)

Abhi said...

Bahooot accha post likhteee ho aap.:p
That was a real fun read :).

Vidya said...

he he very funny post.. really liked it .. Just happened to drop by your blog and found it very interesting..

I liked the 'no sanity-loving young boy will ever woo a hindi-speaking maiden' para best :)

And your are right about the gender thing :D

Ravi said...

Once had to say 23 to an autowallah. I forgot who to say it in Hindiand had to quickly reel off the numbers from 1 onwards to 23 ( i had rote-learnt it as third language in class V ) to recall it
:-)

Noodle

Anonymous said...

I hate HINDI!!!! I think we southies should be given an alternative language to learn. Like business german for instance! :))

HILARIOUS post =))

indu said...

hey sidin ,
gr8 post. being from mallu land,i never learnt to speak hindi till last year. And even now i have no clue about the gender thing. i dont think i will ever have tht:(.
and to top it all, blokes from hindi heartland asks me how i managed to talk to my friends in college without knowin hindi!! i think according to them its the only language that exists in India and all South Indian languages are Tamil including malayalee( the most common word i heard for malayalam after keraleese)

Sushil said...

Very funny post. My blooper in a school hindi exam was to forget the word for coconut and writing a line which said "Nar ka pani peene ke liye bahut acha hai" . Unfortunately only late I realized the difference between "Nar" and "Narial"

Archana Hari said...

rofl! :) CAM! i suffer from the same kana-khana syndrome.. Hail Sothi Languages! :)

Ardra said...

so sidin has reappeared on the horizon of blogdom- glad to see you- and hope u don't go dissappearing again- atleast not for so long...
as for the gender thing- I add ka/ki/ke- all three just in case and the hearer canchoose the right one!
and in spite of being mallu- tamil too stumps me at times-
hubby loves to tease me becos I say "naai varaar" with utmost respect- "avar varuthu" with complete disdain- sigh....

Deepa said...

Good one Sidin!

My attempts at "write in your own words" were equally embarrassing. Sentences like 'thavala well me hai" were read out in class...

Anonymous said...

This post reminds me about my one time colleague, who happened to go to Mumbai for an official meeting. After a tiring day, he was bargaining with the auto driver and he wanted to say 90 but sadly didnot remember the hindi equivalent. He ended up saying "Sau ka dus kammi". The auto driver was puzzled and we all were rolling down with laughter..

Anonymous said...

hmm... this tam friend of mine once told an auto driver - "aap mujhe yahin chod do". for the uninitiated... not the best thing to tell someone in jharkhand :)

Unknown said...

An oldish Malayalam movie comes to mind...

"Mein Gurkha hu,...err, he, heim"

Pls note that we Mallus never make it to the end of it to pronounce it hoon, haan etc. We get it over with rather quickly and spare the nasal of all the trouble - 'hu', 'he', and 'haiym' are more like it.

Admin said...

HAHAHAHAHA..
You just are too much..
Been waiting for your next post here it comes with a bang.

I had put up your Nomenclature Post in my Blog's hall of fame..
Blog's hall of fame..
And now this one is almost as good.
And damn you, i am laughing at work..

SO I asked, Kya Huiii?

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Unknown said...

hilarious sidin

nice one for the new year. I remember when i was in fifth i had forgot how to say enough and my freinds mom kept on feeding me till i remembered "bus aunty aur nahi"

Manish Bhatt said...

lala is not a relation, yes, but they use lulla (as in Sunil Lulla) for small kids in the family.

And potha, pothi is a telling pronunciation. In north, they have pota, poti, just as they have Kavita (not Kavitha) and Lata (not Latha). Useful tip, that.

Sankalp said...

Welcomeback and what a way to end the draught of posts.

Hilarious post!

Main to aap ki kalam chalne ka besabri se intezaar kar raha tha.

I cam speak close to immaculate Hindi even after spending the last 2 years in AP, isnt that an achievement?

Nirav Kanodra said...

Nice one. To prevent further discrimination of south indians, some pgp2s have already formed a "Dakshin Bharatiya Hindi Sangathan" in WIMWI.
THe membership would be very high, till one tam gent proposed that others also form a Uttar Bharatiya Tamil Sangathan (or whatever you call that in TAM)
I guess you would be the honorary president, and Total (or Joshua Pereira ..wasnt it) would be the honorary chairman ;)

silverine said...

You are perhaps the best humor writer I have come across with a sense of humor that comes so naturally. There is absolutely no effort used to reel off incidents, observations and descriptions. Such talent is rare. This made hilarious reading.

Anonymous said...

'Pothi', incidentally is used to denote a big book (heavy one and/or revered/religious/important). And yes, it also has a gender - F.

Thanu said...

Oh I have done the sade ek.

Then again I can speak hindi better than any hindi native, speaks Malayalam

And my friend makes me proud.

abhijit said...

That was a well-written post. I took French in school. French is somewhat similar to Hindi in the sense that it has got words to address people respectfully, unlike English where everyone is referred to as "you".

French also has accents placed above and below letters to differentiate the sounds.

All in all its equally confusing.

Shammi said...

Oh jeez... I laughed so much because I identified with the Hindi learning SOOOOOOOO damn much! :)

கைப்புள்ள said...

Sidin back with a bang! I instantly identified myself here. On my first visit to the North from Chennai I was made fun of for pronouncing "Khaana" as "Kaana" and "Singh" as "Sing". And I still have the confusion as to which non-living thing in Hindi is "aa raha hai" and which is "aa rahi hai".

Paani sounded very much like Rani, so i asked somebody in my hostel "Pani aa rahi hai kya?" "Paani nahi aa raha" was the instant riposte. Fax does rhyme with Max, pity one has to do a sex change surgery to make it female.

Coupled with that you have enough local styles like "Aapne jaana kahan hai" which has a Punjabi accent. "Aap kya pasand keejiyega? or Kaun Mohalla" in Bihari style or "Tanne samajh na aave?" in chaste Haryanvi. All these are too much for an unsuspecting Madrasi who already has to pump out enough air from his belly to pronounce "Khaana" and "Thali" and "Singh".

Akshay said...

Man I so agree with you. I am a Maharashtrian. And although we are a tad bit better than you mallus when it comes to our lingual skills in Hindi, it is not something to write home about. And what we usually end up speaking is a concoction of hindi framework with embedded marathi words.

Vee Cee said...

Awesome! Back with a bang!
Reminded me of the guy who said 'ande ki maathaa chahiye' at a restaurant.

Anonymous said...

Great post Sidin, back after a long long time

Vipul

Adi Narayan said...

that was one fantastic piece. I can see it enter the echelons of fame like the south indian names bit.
Keep rocking on...

Ananya S P said...

Thats a real good post Sidin. Welcome back. Missed your posts for a long time. I too had problems with Hindi but managed to get good scores and learnt the language pretty well inspite of being in chennai. I remember when once my hindi teacher asked me "Who is Harivansh Rai Bachchan?" Pat came the reply " He is Amitabh Bachchan's father"
She got so upset with me nad later drove the daylights out of me...
Poor dame! she had expected me to say that he was the writer of "Madhushaala"...:))

Ananya S P said...

VC

Are you talking about the guy from malluland who said this???

I have this friend whose father is known to have said this at a restaurant...Infact this friend told me that he referred to "Swimming pool" as " Paani Mein Ghoomna thing "

Hee ! Hee !!

Anonymous said...

But according to me the greatest conspiracy of all is expressly meant to prevent mallus, tams, gults and the like from marrying into Hindi-speaking families.

surely good taste is sufficient prevention.

Anonymous said...

That one rocked!!:)
There was a frnd of mine who struggled his way out to buy something from a grocery shop in Pune.
" Thel mein dala tho Phut..Phut"
If u were the shopkeeper wud u have guessed it as Mustard? ":):)

-Prasad

ritzkini said...

back with a vengeance,eh ?
=))
ulti dude !
*i meant ulti in english,not matrabhasha hindi !*
:)

Surya Ragunaathan said...

hey, first timer on ur blog...excellent! hilarious! ur post reminded me of my dad's hatred for Hindi...he works with a PSU bank...once while talking to a customer, he happend to ask, "aapka kaata kidhar hai?"(Khaatha - account)...hehe, he's given up on his attempts...btw, u r one amongst the top 5 here, chk it out - www.sanityunstuck.blogspot.com (his is a good blog to read as well)
cheers!!

Anonymous said...

great post sidin..

Anonymous said...

As per the belief of many linguistics Mallu is the most difficult Indian language to learn.
English is rich in terms of vocabulary since it adopts right words from right places and according to me there is nothing wrong in it, wish we also do this.
Hindi is definitely easier to learn than English, because of its fixed rules of pronounciations. Gender rules might be confusing to non-hindi population, but if you notice the english speaking style and pronounciation of southies or biharis, that is much more funnier than Hindi speaking englishmen.
sometime try to notice how much attrocities are put upon english, by so called hindi hating people in comparison to hindi. It is simply killing, any english lover would rather kill himself than hear that so called english language.

Its not about the difficulty of the language, its about giving tolerance to new users. Not making fun of them and correcting them at the same time.

as far as pot"h"a and pota are concerned, I really wonder what is wrong with people putting "h" at wrong places and not putting when required. By doing a simple linguistic study or following the dictionary pronounciation keys closely, it can be easily found out when to put "h" (Pronounced as "hetch" by few people for absolutely unknown reasons). Still so many people consistently doing this blunder is aweful.

Automotivix said...

Ha ha haaaa...you are on rampage once again....

Anonymous said...

Awesome post Sidin...the freaking bhajji thing is so damn familiar..yeah, it means the same in gult too :-) Be a lil careful when ur addressing a surd and have a tam/gult around you..they would laugh their heads off indeed.

Anonymous said...

Sidinboy,i feel u should now be writing a book called "my experiments with hindi"..u have written about this in ur ealier blogs too..i remember.And this post was well worth the wait..
Long Live Sidin!!

Anonymous said...

awesome one sidin!!
and.. how much i can relate to this...
i remember this incident a few years ago when I wanted to visit the top floor of a high rise in Bangalore to get a view of the city- i was stopped in the lift by the sincere guard and asked where i wanted to go and why (it was a government office building). And putting my Hindi to test i said "dikhane ke liye uppar ja raha hoon" (i intened saying "dekhne ke liye") It took me a few years to realise why the guard looked so shocked..

Nina said...

Rule South India!
My dad went to Delhi to study not knowing a word of Hindi, and therefore a constant source of amusement to his friends. He once saw a poster for the movie 'Des Pardes' and excitedly told his friends that a new English movie called 'Desparadoes' had come out...
A friend once said this: 'Mujhe ek lakdi pakao'- he meant 'Mujhe ek ladki patao'.
And my printer once threw a piece of metal at me (I swear!)

Anonymous said...

wow...classic sidin!

reminds me of a buddy who wanted to tell a batchmate, "long time no see..." and ended up saying with an absolutely straight face..."p__ aaj kal tu dikhati nahin"

Anonymous said...

Sidin Aliyo!

Tood good !

Reminds me of the time when one who went to buy a rope for tying a clothesline at a multi purpose store and asks. " Ek Rassi milegaa?". The shopkeeper replies. "Lassi nahi hain, Chhaas chalegaa?" ...

Well , there's that and more in my own post on the same topic (Rukavat ke liye Raved (i mean khed) hai' . Just click on my name.........

Anonymous said...

Use the below link

http://flaashgordon.blogspot.com/2005/07/rukavat-ke-liye-khed-hai-soda-kiskkaa.html

Cheers
flaash

Aslan said...

pure genius d00d. talk abt bein' the voice of the public. i'm sure any true blue mallu who studied in an REC can relate perfectly to this.. i for one can. thank god all this happened back in college. 4 yrs there didn't further my technical knowledge, but it sure gave me what 8 yrs of CBSE (course A) hindi textbooks cudn't. 1st milestone was crossed on 1/1/06 when the guy at the anjuna beach shack asked me "aap mumbai se ho?" - 2nd milestone wud be when i pattafy a northie gal. ;) methinks its high time i embarked on that mission! :p

Aslan said...

n' my here's my contrib to the blooper list: i went one beyond the sade ek phenomenon. a guy asked me "time kya hai?" n' i replied, "ded baje ho gaya" n' the frustrating tittering.. but he had the sense to correct me "ded baj gaye/gaya/gayi..." :-o

Manoj Pillai said...

Awesome post man.
Really Booker prize material.
:-)

-Manoj.

Sridevi said...

Well, look at it this way- the North Indians ought to be proud of us, and congratulate us, instead of laughing. They know only English and Hindi, and it's absolutely hilarious listening to them pronounce even a single Tam or Mally word. Whereas, we southies know English, mother tongue (Tam/ Mallu/ Gult) and can manage to convey meaning in a HIndi conversation. The northies actually have it real easy. We ought to be proud of ourselves, instead of feeling bad that we atleast attempt to learn a new language- they don't even try!

PS said...

Too hilarious.. am ROTFL.

Some of the bloopers mentioned in the comments were hilarious too. Reminded me of this undergrad classmate of mine who knows zero hindi and his many bloopers.
Once he wanted to scold a guy in Hindi and he knows only abuses in Hindi, so asked someone whats Hindi for come here.
He ended scolding the dude "Idhar Aiye Behenchod" :))

Anonymous said...

hmmm... That reminded me that Hindi of today is composed of hindi, urdu, persian and lots and lots of local dialects prevelant during middle ages. To appreciate it one would have to actually end up learning all the rest of the languages.

Just like we go to our house but we never go to our home but simply go home. Why? Find out from the English, or the saxons or the greeks or the latins.

Well, there was a similar article at school by a padre who doubled as a school teacher on English. And he analysed the nuances of the English language with an apaling humour! Kudos to you who has struggled and mastered a language not closely associated with the mother tongue and have the spirit left to site off the nitty-gritties. Good post indeed!

nerdie said...

Hey,,sidin,,
thats a great blog man!!!
I was laughing my head off on that!!! I have a number a mallu frnds and they also face the same kind of problems......It was a good post sidin....

dazedandconfused said...

Wow! The funniest blog I have read so far. Its going to be really tough to update my own blog with any real sense of satisfaction.
One of my Tam batchmates from Erode, admitted during his ragging ordeal that "Bhains" meant money. So there he was giving a speech on 'money' in Hindi which went like,
"Hum sab Bhains kamane aaya hai"
and
"Sabko bhains milna hai"...
Yup. Me too tam grew up in delhi-learnt Hindi weekdays-from calendar guy.

Siddhu said...

Screw hindi!!

Being a mallu, I have suffered a similar fate al my life! :P

Until now when some idiot makes fun of my hindi genders, I turn to him and make fun of his english pronunciation and grammar. Yields instant results! Try it out sometime. Works with 99.9% of hindi speakers!

samudrika said...

the weekly Hindi movie on TV

You mean channel 33 on thrusday night perhaps? ;) When someone says annual trips to India, growing up in a muslim country, when eid mubarak is wished in the same vein(maybe more) as happy diwali, you know that you have met one of those mixed up souls who grew up in the Middle East.

I like your writing. Keep up the good job. Would love to read something about life in the UAE.

p.s. I started my schooling in Abu Dhabi Indian School too.

Rajesh J Advani said...

I hear you! :)

A "North-Indian" (A term used by people in Tamil Nadu to refer to everyone who doesn't belong to the 4 "South-Indian" states) tends to have the same problem in Chennai, though.

There's three different pronunciations for "n", but "p", "ph", "b" and "bh" are represented by the same letter of the alphabet. Same for "T", "Th", "D", "Dh". I _could_ go on. But I won't.

Anonymous said...

as a person who has failed in hindi 4 times (the only ever subject)....i feel ur pain my friend...;-)......

brilliant posts...had me on the floor with the bhajji comment...

pls do not stop....

Regards
nivas

Anonymous said...

he he... have you seen the movie "chupke chupke" starring dharmendra, amitabh, sharmila, jaya? Am sure many a fluent hindi speaking people wouldn't understand the "shuddh hindi" terms spoken there. Ever imagined a steam engine could be called lauha path gami agneerath (the fire chariot that moves on iron tracks)?

and that hilarious shayari of james-

aaj baagon mein khilenga ek gulaab
de saqi pila de pila de pila de ek gilaas julaab.

hope u know what julaab is... he he.

Anonymous said...

Hi, I've been reading your blog quite regularly after the mallu wedding entry, and I have to say, I'm positively hooked..you have great comic timing, in addition to being a very gifted writer. Good luck to you!

-R

Anonymous said...

Too good dude!! :)
Now, I don't repent for not being able to get the twists and turns of Hindi. A couple of my colleagues here at Shanghai have told that my Chinese accent is better than that of all other Indians at office. So, you too can try your hand (mouth) at Chinese. We'll get it :)

-Doc.

Anonymous said...

2 of our teammates in Bangalore (all girls) were speaking between themselves in Hindi and I was a silent spectator. Lost my patience and asked them 'Aap dhonon ke andar me kya hei?' For a moment there was silence, and then I realised the blunder that I'd committed :) The incident became very popular among our colleagues, especially the fairer sex :(

-Doc

Meg said...

I LOVED your post! (I've actually just read back from August to here) It reminds me of my troubles with Mandarin (haha the white girl said "undercooked" which sounds like "able-to-get-pregnant" hahaha)

Manoj Pillai said...

This is one really funny post.
I re-read it today, and I still laughed a lot.
Very good stuff.
-Manoj(Walk2Rem)