My best friend complained to me about the philosophical (Really? I guess she is too sweet to use the words “drab” and “dreary”) nature of the last few posts and hence I promised her that the next post would not have any sad undertone/overtone.
I have come across a very interesting language and so I decided to share some insights here. You might have read something about it here. But I still felt that I have something more to share.
Prerequisite: To follow this post you have to have a very basic knowledge of Hindi.
Let us analyze the etymology of a few words of this language.
- Makan means khana:
(E: Influence of the witch’s house from Hansel and Gretel )
- Air means pani:
(E: We always keep comparing water with life and poor air keeps serving us and just because of it’s invisibility we keep ignoring it.
Just like a classic love story…water is the show off whom you mistakenly think to be the love of your life and air keeps loving you secretly all this while…then one day you are left by both water and air and you die…
No Paro…No Chandramukhi…Devdas dies)
- Saya means main
(E: Nice word for me.)
- Anda means tum.
(E: Nice insult for you)
- Gila means pagal.
(E: When newborns wet themselves at the interval of 5 seconds I guess that does drive their parents crazy. )
- Garam means namak.
(E: They are the first people to have tasted sweat...)
- Dan means aur. (E: Anagram of and…)
And finally the one that won me over!
8. Chinta means pyar! (E: Do I need to elaborate? If you qualify as a human being I'm sure you will agree to this one.)
From now on think twice before telling anyone “I worry a lot about you”...
Well I was immensely pleased to have picked up so many new words…until…
One day I heard two local people talking in their native tongue and I was surprised to find that I am getting the meaning. “Wow! I have learnt so fast!” With a smug look on my face I proceeded to ask the person, “Excuse me…are you guys conversing in *****?”
“No…we are talking in Bangla.”
“Oh…so the two of you have been talking in Bengali…”
“No no…it is Bangla…we are from Bangladesh…you Indians can never pronounce it correctly.”--- a very condescending smile on his face.
(Often life’s “I am the best” moments are followed by “I am worthless” moments--- states the law of conservation of awesomeness.)
Coming back to the original topic…there are other casual words with very “unusual” connotations. Your reaction on hearing those might vary from a naughty twinkle in your eyes to a petunia blush in your cheeks depending on the kind of person you are. So to save you from embarrassment I shall not highlight those here.
But this post would be incomplete if I do not mention the following.
“Terima kasih” means “Thank you” in this very special language.
So if someone obliges you with a favour you are supposed to say "beep beep" …makes you uncomfortable…does it not?
Makes me think of poor Harbhajan Singh…if only he was aware of this language during the Symonds episode the whole incident could have been presented in a different light altogether…
