Dear Diary – IV

Remember when you were little and grandma was snoozing and you were determined to be a tease? Grandma would seem to be unfazed by your incursions into her comfort zone and then all of a sudden, her eyes would fly open and her false teeth would pop out at you.  Scary! And the next day you would try it again to see if she would do it again!!  (I agree that my childhood memories may not be universal, but I’m sure somebody, somewhere will have experienced this.)

This morning a young dog, still at the very playful age, was urging an old dog to be up and at it.  It was early morning, the sky still grey and the weather damp from overnight rain.  The old dog sported a very grey muzzle and ears.  He ignored the youngster and rearranged his limbs with a deep sigh.  The youngster would not give up. Finally, the old one raised himself rheumatically on all fours and bared his teeth with a menacing growl. The youngster fled yelping down the street.  The old one shook himself (I’m sure I heard a satisfied ‘harrumph’) and settled himself back into snooze mode.  Some tricks still work. And the young dog will be back tomorrow. 

The juxtaposition of memory and incident was a welcome start to the day.  More so since the morning papers always seem to offer bad news, on top of bad news.

Today, at least one news item proved interesting: The East Indian dictionary. A resource that will provide future generations with information about the mother tongue that many no longer use. 

My introduction to EI-speak was via a recipe.  The final touch required one to run a greased belan over the surface of a cooked sweet ‘dough’ after it had been poured into a mould, in order to render it smooth before cutting into triangles.  What on earth was a belan?  A classmate at Secretarial School, supplied the answer: ‘rolling pin’.  She was, as I discovered later, an EI.  

Over the years, I have encountered words and expressions which convey much better than the translation, exactly what the speaker means.  For example a ghoomat is a ghoomat ! What else would you call a gutted, dried gourd, topped off with a dried skin, drummed upon with the tips of the fingers to render a magnetic beat? It’s not a drum, it’s not a tabla, it’s not a bongo.  It’s a ghoomat.

EI speak is not easy to acquire; you need to be attuned from birth.  It is akin to Marathi but is a dialect in its own right, with vocabulary, grammar and idiom that the dictionary will hopefully capture. I never did quite pick it up since hubby spoke fluent English and Marathi when conversation was needed.  At other times, words were redundant.

But my AI ears are always tuned in to new sounds and I did manage to grab a few choice words and phrases here and there.

My favourite? Just has to be ‘pyethyu’ (rendered phonetically).  It is supposed to mean ‘young lad’ but more often connotes ‘lazy rascal’ and many a nephew has been hailed with ‘oye pyethyu’ in his time!  

Being EI is not just belonging to a community, it is a way of life which one encounters in the living: cuisine and kitchen implements, weddings and social encounters, dress, music, architecture and furnishing, customs and observances.  How long will all this be followed?

For example, almost gone is the lugna (lugda?) – the nine yard sari - replaced by ubiquitous denim (the universal jeans).  As a wife, I did sport the festive nine yards on occasion (surprisingly comfortable!) but as a widow I need to don one of another colour.  So, mine has become a relic which may perhaps be worn by generation next more as fancy dress than attire.

For now, the past is present in memory.  Happily so!

Clutterbumph!

Shades of ‘My Fair Lady’ and ‘why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?’ Well anyone who knows will tell you that spoken English is a minefield that is well nigh impossible to navigate.

Written English is a snap and with a little practice, words can be made to trip breezily off the pen. All you need is a collection of esoteric words and phrases, culled from adventurous reading; Google them to find out the meanings and how they can be used, bung them into your sentences and, hey presto, you sound erudite! Thanks to the creative Americans, there is no shortage of new words and we have to thank them for the growing weight of our dictionaries, reverse dictionaries, thesauruses and mental baggage.

Spoken English, on the other hand, can strip off the mask, leaving you exposed. It’s everyone’s clutterbumph (love the word – thank you, Paul Gallico). Thanks to the fact that the English language is heavy on adoption, we have to negotiate words culled from every language of the globe, ancient and modern. Greek and Latin are not too bad, the Indian languages are phonetic and therefore pose no great problems (except for the British!), German is another happily phonetic tongue – spoken as she is written. But when you come to words derived from French, your troubles begin. Pronunciation is diametrically opposite to the way the word is spelt, and why on earth anyone would want to do that is a mystery. Spanish (‘j’ is pronounced as ‘h’ and ‘ll’ is pronounced as ‘y’!!) and Italian (actually, not too bad) add to the confusion. Throw in silent letters and words that are spelt similarly but pronounced differently (cough and bough are good examples), add to them the staples of pronunciation exercises (Worcester pronounced ‘wooster’ and brougham pronounced ‘broom’) and you will be caught up in an inextricable tangle. Despite investing in a pronunciation dictionary, spoken English still sends me into a tizzy.

The social interaction aspect also comes into play. How does one discourse with another whose pronunciation of common words differs radically? Shades of ‘I say tom(ah)to, you say tom(ay)to’!

Peter Piper, of tongue twister fame, will probably realise with chagrin, that it’s time to stop ‘picking pecks of pickled pepper’ and get with it if he wants to orate with sangfroid and chutzpah!

Hobson Jobson

It has such a lovely ring, doesn’t it? While browsing among the shelves in a friend’s library, I came across this tome which purported to be ‘a glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases and kindred terms, etymological, historical, geographical and discursive’!

Being an Anglo-Indian, I was intrigued, recalling the merriment which my parents’ very AI pronunciation evoked when it came to speaking the local lingo. To illustrate: for ‘coming’ my mother would call out ‘arthur’ for ‘aata hai’. We also had a very individual and colourful lexicon, typical of the AI family. Most of the words and phrases have now been forgotten but a couple which can still rustle up a smile, when the occasion demands, are glue-pachari and muttai pink (since these words were spoken and not written, I have spelt them as phonetically as possible).

Glue-pachari, which was usually shortened to ‘gloop’, was used to indicate the kind of visitor who seemed to be attached to our chairs with Fevicol and refused to leave. As with all children, fascinated by an overheard new word, I would happily announce to my parent, ‘Ma, the gloop is here’ much to her embarrassment!

Muttai pink was the descriptive used for the virulent shade of pink found in some sweetmeats and nylon ribbons. If a colour was a shade too hurtful to the eye or showed lack of taste, the tag ‘muttai’ would be gleefully added to show one’s strong reaction.

A favourite name and person was Mr. Jerry Puranawala, the handle given to the ‘rag and bones’ man or bangarwala. With his rusty scales, doubtful weights and measures, and gunny sack he would visit our homes on the appointed day to collect old newspapers, utensils, rags and other miscellany thus helping us clean our homes and keep the piggybank rattling.

These words and phrases had a certain ring to them and added colour to the conversation; words which have now fallen into disuse, and are rarely but fondly recalled when reminiscing with a generation that is fast departing this world. Transient words which marked a time in history.