The Language of Andre Pandre

Part 2 is here.

No matter how much I made fun of the people below Madhya Pradesh who shall remain unnamed lest I am tagged a racist, fate ensured I live in close proximity to them. My ears could initially pick up nothing that sound different from andre-pandre, a language which people otherwise call Tamil, but these days, I am trying to train my otherwise linguistically challenged ears to understand bits and pieces of Tamil.

Baby Kalyani is getting her first lessons in Tamil too, but she, with a total of 4 teeth, 2 above and 2 below, barely speaks anything coherent. So I made a list of the key words and literally rattafied them (like some say, learnt them by heart). Now whenever G converses andre-pandre, I recognize it to be more than andre-pandre, picking up certain key words here and there.

Fluent in 3 Indian languages and English, I had long forgotten my initial lessons when mother would have made me repeat words after her and taught me the syntax and grammar of a language. I find myself a kid again, learning the basics of a language because it drove me insane, living in a house full of people and not understanding a word of what they said.

So I started with learning that “ongo” added to a verb made it a sign of respect (like Telugu people add andi to respect others, no matter how scandalous it sounds). So “poh” means go and “pongo” means please go. Also “wah’ means come and “wango” means please come. You have to excuse my spellings here, since I spell things exactly the way I hear them. I tried adding words of my own that rhymed with pongo and wango, like tango and mango, but it seems it makes no sense in Tamil. I would only think if you were to call a man with respect, you would call him mango. Forgive my PJs here, they only grow worse as I approach senility.

Then I learnt some more verbs that would see me through the day. “Saapad” is to eat, something I remembered by rhyming it with papad. “Papad Saapad” is eat a papad. Eating had to be followed by drinking, which funnily enough is called “kudi”. So while G asked me to “kudi”, I blushed thinking she is complementing me to be a sohni kudi (a young and beautiful girl in Punjabi). Now since I was wondering what exactly to drink, I learnt that “tanni” is water and “pal” (Like the Bengali actor Taposh Pal) is milk. So tanni kudi, pal kudi, and sohni kudi are the 3 similar sounding phrases I know these days.

Of course the quintessential Bong that I am, eating and drinking had to be followed by shitting. This again in Tamil is kakka, a Bengali equivalent of kaka, the uncle. When I learnt this, I thought of all my uncleswith their sad faces at having been called shit, and silently asked them to forgive me. Life will never be the same again, especially every time I meet an uncle of mine, and try addressing him. Sighs !!!

I picked up other basic words, like “kaartaal” for morning, and “sayankaal” for evening. “Aama” is consenting, with “amma-appa” are mom and dad. “Appa inge” is where is father, to which a happy baby Kalyani smiles and whispers “fisshhh”, meaning office. Since the whereabouts of the father was not important to me, I substituted appa with other words. “Mottai inge” was where is the bald head, which I remembered from the term “matha motta” in Bengali, meaning a dim witted, brainless person. Matha or bald head by default in Tamil means “mottai”. All mathas are mota. But I am not making fun of anyone. I am merely trying to learn the language through associations.

After “mottai”, “kaad” had to mean ear, mook had to mean “nose” (while I would think it means mouth). “Kaad” reminded me of “kadal” meaning love, I had learnt during my teens when like all foolish teenagers, I had resolved to learn how to say the word in every language. “Rhomba” means big, or a lot, a word that always reminds me of a rhombus from geometry classes. Then there is “pinnadi” and “munnadi”, one meaning the front and the other meaning the rear, though I don’t know which one exactly means what.

There are many food dishes that all end with “al”…. aviyal, poriyal, thuvayal, nariyal, and many more. Okay, not the last one, but one of these days I have to ask G the reason behind such culinary nomenclature. And then I have randomly learnt some stuff. Pongo Kulingo is please go take a bath, something to which baby Kalyani cracks up and smiles a toothless, gummy smile the moment I tell her. It is possible it sounds funny, the way I speak Tamil. And then I keep telling G how my room looks like a couppa thoti (dustbin).

Little words. Baby steps. I like the progress I am making every day, a few words here and there. These days not all the things people say around me sound alien, or andre-pandre-ish. I am picking up little words here and there, so that I know if G is bitching about another female friend on the phone, cribbing about how the other friend has no sense of potty-training the baby, or how the other friend she doesn’t care about was showing off big time on her trip to Florida.

But other than the few words I understand, the rest all still sounds like andre-pandre.

sunshine

Part 2 is here.

Living Throes- A New Chapter

Being unemployed brought with it a lot of transitions. While I wanted to stay here long enough to find myself a job or a substitute engagement, paying bills and rent became somewhat of a challenge. I struggled with the idea of temporarily moving with someone after my lease expired. It was a difficult decision- letting go of your independence, your space and privacy, something the US teaches you. Back in India, I hardly cared about living under the same roof with my parents, sibling, and relatives who visited us too frequently to be called visitors. Yet here even the thought of sharing someone else’s space made me think again, not just in terms of someone encroaching my space, but also in terms I encroaching their space.

The first hurdle came in finding someone I would like enough to stay with. I approached a few friends and finally I moved in with G and her family, who were more than happy to host me. The next hurdle was to physically move from my apartment. The stress of moving is often underestimated. It started with selling off my furniture, getting rid of things I did not need, and packing the rest into boxes. Every stage of moving is such a Herculean task that I could write chapters about it. Earlier this month, I finally said adieu to my apartment and moved in with G. It seems like living out of suitcases. All my belongings are stacked in boxes in their garage. I look at the boxes and sigh – for all the stuff I accumulated in 3 years and had a pretty functional home going for me, it seems as if my life has been dismantled and stored in boxes.

In the meantime while I wait in anticipation for some news everyday, maybe an admit from a school, life has been quite different ever since I moved here. Her 16-month-old baby Kalyani keeps me busy, and I am observing and learning so much from being with the little one. Last Sunday when I finally moved out of my apartment, I was inconsolable. Packing and cleaning had seeped me out of my energy. As I said a final goodbye to my apartment, I knew I was stepping into a life of uncertainty and quasi-homelessness. Not that G or her family has ever made me feel unwelcome, but just the thought of leaving your apartment, your space was scary. Everything took a while to get used to- the different bed, the different door knobs, the smell of the house, the feel of carpet beneath my feet.

Sunday evening I called my friend who lives in Kirkland and howled on the phone. I had no reason to cry [I should have been happy on the contrary that someone was nice enough to let me stay at their place]. I felt like a little baby who has started going to school. I felt vulnerable, miserable, and insecure. Deep down I had this thought of feeling like a homeless.

However things started to fall into place soon. I got used to living in a new household. I started with making myself useful and helping in simple things like taking care of baby Kalyani, unloading the dishwasher, and so on. But it does feel great to have company, to share your morning tea with someone, to have a partner for gym, and of course a baby to smile at you and keep you on your toes. I am getting used to the idiosyncrasies and the food habits of a Tamil household. Not that I understand much of what they converse.

That has been my life so far- getting used to the changes, waiting forever in dilemma, praying I get an admit from a decent school, and waiting in a limbo. It’s not the best of the situations to be in, but in a way, I am lucky that I still have a house to live in and people to care for me. The nice little things people do for you during your hard times really remain as blessings with you. Let’s see what life has to offer after this.

sunshine

Scar(r)y Vegetable Story

My friend G has a granny, like every friend, and every human in general does. G’s granny is different though. She seems to be the enlightened one, knowledgeable about things around her, and always full of examples and anecdotes from life.

She explained to G long back how the marriage market works. It’s like a buyer in the busy vegetable market. The earlier you went there, the better the supply of vegetables was. Crisp, fresh, green, nutritious, healthy vegetables, no puns intended. The later you went in the day, the more the chances you ended up with rotten vegetables, not fit to be consumed except by the flies. So the earlier you decided to tie the knot, the better you had your chances of finding the person of your choice. The older you got, the lesser your choices were. All that remained in the unmarried market were scarred, rotten vegetables.

I kept listening to G’s granny’s words of wisdom, with a scary image forming in my head. I was in a vegetable’s market, much later in the day, where there were hardly any vegetables left. The ones that were there were the rejected ones. Was that what I’d end up buying? Or would I go home vegetable-less?

Then I had an even more scary image in my head. Someone was sifting through the vegetables later in the day. I was one of the rotting vegetables.

Bummer !!!

sunshine