Unintended fun

 Unintended fun

[Thoroughly imaginary with no malaise whatsoever]

The reader is invited to presume that the event goes on in a college hostel of a high profile institution functioning in an Indian METROPOLIS. The purpose of drawing a metropolis into the topic is to throw open the feasibility of imagination that revolves round a group of friends drawn from different lingual belts of our multilingual, multicultural Nation. Being from different language cultures, everyone prefers to stick to his mode of speech –especially the dialect, little recognizing ‘how funny it is’ for all others both by pronunciation and by the usage. Needless to say ‘it prevails in most such situations’ where a few of them manage to use Hindi, some have working knowledge of the language [all non –Tamils] while a few are oblivious of the on-goings ‘except’ that friends are conversing [Persons from Tamil Nadu]. Keeping in with the mood of the assembly these Hindi-illiterates too let off guffaw not knowing that they are themselves the  butts of the joke being shared among classmates in I year of  some High-tech programme. No offence meant to anyone, Is my reiteration just to keep the record straight. Now, on to the ‘actuals’ of conversations which appear comic. In order that the phonetic form is registered in the way uttered, it is obligatory to  employ wrong spelling to give the sound effect.

What is your plan after this course?  Some ‘X’ says I go ’phoren’ [ He intends going abroad as ‘phoren’ is forign’]. After 3 minutes of further conversation , our Thanjaavur boy laughs saying FAAR IN AAH? IMPLIED TO say is it foreign? The rest of the gang laughs at the wide-mouthed  FAAR IN AAH?. The irritated Thanjaavur man; Y  doo yooou aall laaauffU? MEANT TO ASK ‘Why do you all laugh?  Yuvar angrej  is phunni – a Hindi boy . The Nellai boy Angrej?  Wee or frends –no ANGER JI here. . It opens up greater fun as ANGREJ was misread as ‘Anger’ ji. Actually everyone in that group has a peculiar accent. Not knowing that every other fellow imagines self to be perfect, these boys keep nurturing cordiality –for, –every other group MAY readily target them for ‘RAGGING’. Better to BE ragged by classmates than by others. They KEEP walking into the town, each with a specific item of purchase for personal use. The Hindi boy ‘I NEED A SAABOON’. Nellai AND Thanjavoor stare at each other in fear as to how we can get on with these and with interrogative looks mutually worry the other for the meaning of ‘SABOON’. Nellai whispers to Thanjavvor –will know at the shop from his purchase as to what is ‘saboon’. Their wit failed because the ‘Hindi boy’ bought 7 or 8 items making it more complicated to pick out ‘saboon’ from that bunch.

At the shop Thanjavoor and Nellai kept off to have their own items which were just comb and coconut oil. Not knowing the preferred name in the area, the two struggled with ‘COCONUT OIL’, Later ‘THENGAA OIL’; The shop keeper ‘ Tonga oil nai’. Suddenly Nellai shouted PARA SOOT’ [instead of Parachute]The shop keeper ‘soot keliye Ready DHUKAAN me dekiye’. Yes Parasoot is ready made. –‘Nellai boy’. HAAN ji said the Shop man. Then like a stage actor, Thanjavoor boy made signs of pouring oil on left palm and vigorously rubbed on to scalp ; now the shop keeper ‘OYAL HAI NAA? Nellai was afraid that Hyena is an animal and how to use its oil. Meanwhile, the seller brings different brands of oil with the lucky item ‘Parachute’ as one. Then without much trouble they enacted for hair comb and got it too. Again the problem came when Shopkeeper said ‘pachaas’. Knowing their plight the shopkeeper took mercy [upon self] to collect the money and said phiphty [It was much like a BEEDI-SMOKER’S Gesture of saying through the lips “phiphty” instead of the Southerner’s way of saying Fifty between the upper lip and the lower teeth. For us, it is too complicated to call PHIPHTY in place of Fifty.  

Even as they got back to the hostels, more fun was on the cards. I want ‘CHAKLI’ Said the boy from Nanjangud [Karnataka]. The 2 [Nellai and Thanjavoor ] were confused as to how they would locate a cobbler at that late dusk. Normally cobblers wind up at the twilight, as they cannot afford to use expensive lights for work. One person said Chakli can be had at Gandhi sarkal [ sarkal = circle]   N and T were eager to know what was sarkal [ When they saw the huge Neon display they together exclaimed sarkLLL- a heavy pronunciation of K and  L      together,   WHILE OTHERS CHOSE TO space out saying sar kal.  Again debate over the phonetic treatment of the word began and Thanjavoor invited controversy saying you peepL make funny pronunciation. All others [except Nellai] joined in chorus to say you peeppal [ pronunciation of people] pronounce bad. When chakli was bought, N and T knew that it was ‘murukku’ the crunchy oil-fried eatable.  It took a couple of weeks before all of them settled to the idiosyncrasies of others in the group. It slowly got entrenched into deep friendship of mutual love and respect by developing  a sense of tolerance for other points of view.        Until words are understood, pronunciation recognized friendship takes time to emerge as friendship is a product of tolerance. Learning other languages is a natural advantage for survival in other geographic territories.  Too rigid postures about language is the route to undue suffering.    

Prof. K.Raman