Mujhe maloom illai

This post by Nikhil got me thinking about my travails while learning the rashtrabhasha. An unforgettable experience for all the wrong reasons. As a non-native Hindi student who spoke only two languages then, both gender-neutral (Mallu and English), ka, ke and ki were nothing short of absolute naaansense. Psst, am letting you in on a li'l secret here... I still play a mental round of inky-pinky-ponky before using one of the 3 in a sentence :((.

There was this brief episode where I tried using simple logic to connect words and decipher meanings. Nearly 15 years later I've realised that my system of logical thinking doesn't apply to 99% of real-life situations. Damn. Take for egg-jample, the first time I heard the phrase "baap re baap" from my Hindi teacher. (Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure she was looking at my notebook.) I thought it meant...(hehehe, shy is the comings)...GRAND-DADDY!

Simple reasoning. Baap = father, therefore Baap re baap = father's father . LHS=RHS. Bravo, Einstein.

That 'Entammachy' is a pretty commonly used phrase in Kerala fuelled this line of thinking. An 'Entappacho' equivalent for the patriarchal Northies didn't seem all that out of place then.

So it shouldn't be too surprising that I barely scraped through the subject in 12 years of school and one year of undergrad. And cribbed all along about how I was wasting precious hours of my existence on a language I'd most likely never use.

Then came Delhi and a yum-bee-yayy, that unleashed me and my brand of Hindi on an unsuspecting populace (mmhmmmwhahahahaha!!) Landed up on campus with a ton of baggage in tow (3/4th of it to preserve my Mum's peace of mind!) and then realised that I'd forgotten to pack a pair of pillowcases. Never mind. Could pick it up during the Lajpat Nagar sutthal.

And so we landed up at Juneja's, where my parents generally admired the bedspreads and tablecloths on display, and yourstruly sashayed forth to get herself a pair of pillowcases.

Haan, madamji?

Anna, err...bhaiyya, mujhe do pillowcover chahiye. White colour. Umm...safed.(Phew!)

He yelled out to no one in particular

Lal pillowcover dikhao!!

Lal??? Ech-yoose me, white IS safed in Hindi..... I know that much even if I'm a raw southie!!

I square my shoulders and look him in the eye.

Ahem...bhaiyya, mujhe laal pillowcase nahin chahiye. Mujhe safed pillowcover chahiye....WHITE. (for added emphasis)

He stared right back at me. The impudence!! And then a slow grin spread over his face. Grrrrr!!!! Now the Goddess is furious!

Madamji, Lal uska naam hai!

(Something goes Pfffffttttt in my head)

And a smiling ten-year-old's face pops up from behind the counter, saying "Ji madam?"

Eeps. Why doesn't the ground just open up??? As expected my parents didn't miss a word. A pair of biiiig smiles from the other end of the shop. Damn. Trust your folks to hear precisely the stuff they have no business listening to. Stood there with a watery, sheepish grin for the rest of the episode.

Of course it's family legend now, the story of how Granddaughter No.1 kicked off her innings in big baaaaaad Dilli. And she lives to tell the tale herself. In the space of three years I've progressed from the kind of Hindi that made my roomies cringe, blanch and run screaming for the hills,to the type that elicits a raised eyebrow and no comments. Ha!! So there!

Misadventures with the language are still dime a dozen. Am currently in the process of Bambaiyya-izing my Hindi. And the effort looks set to continue for a loooong time.

In the meantime, if you happen to walk around Andheri(W) and hear a lady tell the auto-driver, "Mujhe Malad jaana hoon", do stop a second to say hi to Zahra!!

:)