Brilliant Tutorials

Professor R.V. Rangachary Vedanthakrishnan: “Is a gun madi*?”

Kameshwari Devi Suryanarayanan: “Nope, it isn’t”

“It is…stupid Kamu, your elder sister Abithakujalambal went to IIT Mumbai (Indian Institute of Terrorism), your elder brother Venkatasubbu is an ISO 9001 certified terrorist and you…such a waste!”

Kamu looks decidedly embarrassed and slightly peeved. The professor softens; after all she is his favourate student.

“Listen now, since it is madi you have to wash it, bullets et al before you take it up. And needless to say, you must be bathed”

“Now tell me how to throw a genade?”

Kami rattles off stuff she has learnt by-heart, staying up all night long.

“No no no…You will touch the gun with your left hand? Aiyyo! Right hand ma, left is impure…have I taught you nothing?”

“And no biting the grenade off, its yechal** (abacharam! These kids were getting too influenced by western media now-a-days). You must take the pin off with the middle finger and thumb of your right hand, circle the grenade round your head thrice and then throw it”

“What about clothing? No Versace, Gucci and Prada. Wear stuff that’s soaking wet, untouched by anyone. Get it class?”

"Guys..remember Panchapakesa Iyer..brilliant student, IIT topper the idiot was foolish enough to let his gun get stuck in his poonal; tch tch..."

Professor R.V. Rangachary Vedanthakrishnan shuddered as he remembered that ghastly moment.

"Always be careful. Constant vigilance"

“And bonus points if you get any one on the abishtu list***. Poitu vaango kozhandel”

*madi: An eccentric South Indian concept, requiring the person in question to wear wet clothes, touch only similar wet (pure) things and generally be a public nuisance.

**yechal: jhootha, hindi. Something that has had saliva on it.

***abishtu list: An array of names, populated as far back as 2008. Boasts prominent personalities who played a vital role in the rape of Mumbai (caste, age, sex, nationality no bar).

PS:

If you want to take offence, feel free to do so. I find no other way to react. For now.

We are like this only

“You are going na?”

“He drinks cigarettes”

“I am working at Tata Motors”

“I was just telling only ki…”

“Righta leftaa?”

One aspect of modern India sorely lacking serious study is one of its most prolific languages, English. It is everywhere; blending with local languages sometimes, at others being elitist. With English literature having a decent repertoire of Indian author’s works and with English newspapers and television channels reaching the masses, it has come of age in India.

We often speak of good English and yet our brand of the Queens tongue rings of certain peculiar oddities. These not only stem from our mother tongues, but also from the delightful hot-pot that is Indian culture. Our inability to distinguish sometimes between simple and continuous present tenses, of making strange nouns even stranger verbs lend to Inglish a quaint air. The accent stresses more and bends around anglo-saxon oddities, the language however claims absolute loyalty to British English. Quick to throw some of English archaisms, quicker to add new ones, it evolves, grows and is the gateway to a better life for many in the sub continent.

A brief look at Inglish then, with words, their origins (where possible) and context, along with general bits of information that add to ones sense of knowledge, make one smile, but are essentially useless. Inglish Trivia if you will.

Among general words that English absorbed include catamaran, pundit, jute, jungle, juggernaut (from jagannath, Puri; referring to the rath yatra), bangle (bangdi), gym (gymkhana), shampoo and cheetah (sources are in conflict, but their Indic parentage seems doubtless). Also bungalow (hindi bangla), coir and teak both of Dravidian origin; kayir(rope) and tek (teak).

Our obsessive mentality to neatly slot people into classes has burdened English with aryan and pariah. The former from Sanskrit arya meaning noble and the latter from Tamil parayan (outcaste) (also something my grandmother used to refer to me first thing in the mornings it has definite racist connotations). Aryan and the Swastika have negative connotations, thanks to you know who and pariah isn’t a whole lot nicer either.

Enriching the Anglic palate are curry and ginger from Tamil kari and inji Mulligatawny is a bad corruption of milagu tanni (pepper water). Americans, true to their bland tongues shun all spice from it and actually put boiling rice in chicken stock, elsewhere it is just badly made rasam. It doesn’t take large amounts of intellect to connect mango with tamil manga. What is interesting is that the Portuguese also call it manga, and the Alphonso got its name from the Portuguese king, who was served it for dessert by a resourceful chef, as legend has it. The raj hangover left not only a legacy back in India, it also took with it loot and thug (Gabbar Singh immediately springs to mind) and the palanquin (palki).

Much more can be studied, greater minds will deduce more. Inglish is more than a variant of English languishing in the sub-continent, remnant of past greatnesses and follies, to many of us it is lingua franca, lingua prima and most of all the mother tongue.

Update:

Historiophile reminds me that one of the most important foods gets its name from the tamil arisi (rice). The Latin orizia, Italian riso and the French riz also owe their existance to arisi. Thank you.

Gods come and go

A study of Hinduism today is daunting. It is complex, requires great study and must be carefully worded (to avoid ruffling feathers, many of which are just waiting to be ruffled). This is my attempt at understanding a small part of this vast domain.

Any crash course on Hindu Gods will star Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. All of our many Gods are but relatively few. Bengal worships the Devi, Andhra Vishnu. Tamils pray Murugan and Marathas Ganpati. Kerala and Gujarat both venerate the Devi and Krishna alternately. The north calls for Ram and Hanuman. The first ladies of the holy trinity command their own following. A lot of minor Gods and Goddesses find their place in the Indian fabric. Groups of people hold allegiance to one particular God. And yet classical antiquity calls for 330 million Gods. And we rise to the occasion, praying to different entities for each of our needs. Hindu heaven has a neat organizational structure, where each deity is assigned to fulfill specific wants. In the seemingly sterile corporate fabric are hidden relationships. All Gods are related. Spouses, siblings, progeny and ancestors, all relentlessly conspiring in endless cycles of karma and dharma, running India itself, one might suppose. Hinduism has been around for a long time and has undergone several transitions. Scholars grapple with Vedic Hinduism, Bhakti traditions, Medieval Hinduism and even Post-modern Hinduism. Being a Hindu is confusing. Casteism brought its own ways and dikats to worship Gods, language and geography interfered and so today a nation of a billion worships billion Gods in billion ways.

What does an ex-Soviet state, straddling the Caucasus have to do with Hinduism? The birthplace of Hinduism if one might take the liberty to pin down something to that effect, is somewhere on the shores of the Caspian near Baku, Azerbaijan. Spontaneous flames on water and land due to subterranean oil gave birth to fire worship. A few thousand kilometers to the southeast the same race of people lived along a river, the Saraswati or the Haraxwati as the ancient Persians called it.

Ancient Vedic Hinduism had much in common with Zoroastrianism, and the two are purported to have a common ancestry. Several Gods freely flowed across faiths till time and distance pinned them down to a particular religion. And thus began Hinduism. Shrouded in exotic names, birthed in the cold north and rooted in the sub continent. The Asuras were conceived then as powerful entities prone to swift retributions. Agni commanded respect and fire worship is a central part of praying today and the Rig Veda is chanted with a devotion that preserves earlier nuances but whose meanings are lost. So did elemental water and the Sky. Mitra was Sun God and a mediator. Varuna controlled rta* and was de facto head of the fledgling pantheon. Dyaus Pitr (Sanskrit Dhyavaprithvi, Greek Zeus, Slavic Div and Norse Thor) was sky father. Wedded to Prithvi earth Goddess, parents to Indra and Agni. Varuna, Indra, Soma, Agni, Surya/Mitra. These were the Gods we began with. The Rig Veda mentions each one in detail, with dedicated hymns and books. Soma was a complex entity; wine, moon and herb. Sharanya was Surya’s wife, the Goddess of clouds and mother to Shani, Manu and Yama. Deities that were the rage then are passé today. Simple elements gave rise to complex hierarchies and a pantheon was in the making. Later times saw the rise of Rudra and Sati. The Devas were projected as protagonists, the Asuras vilified and the Gods as we know them today came into the forefront. Hinduism was on its way.

Time and the mingling of different peoples and cultures shaped several aspects of the religion, resulting in the way we pray today. All religions have a history. Hinduism does too. The future is what will be interesting.

*rta:

Means the ‘order or course of things’. rta was why trees grew, seasons changed, water flowed and the sun rose. Anyone who controlled rta effectively held the universe in their hands.

भ ஆ శ ಆ

“Привет” I said. That set the mood for the rest of the conversation between my house landlady and me today morning, as we negotiated rent and repairs. Talk to people in their own language and things seem to move along faster. Something I learnt long ago, while dealing with babu’s at Mumbai. Marathi moves paper faster than Hindi or money there. The same applies, from Hyderabad to Helsinki. But apart from revealing the lazy habits of bureaucrats, this also throws light on a small aspect of human nature.

In all this tongue switching and code mixing, I have begun to feel like I don’t belong anywhere at all. I firmly believe that one cannot learn a language unless one is willing to absorb its cultural context. Nor can one profess to know a language just be conjugating all its irregular verbs. Eskimo has over ten words for snow, powdery snow, fresh snow and so on, but curiously no word for just snow. Proto Indo-European supposedly had no word equivalent for ‘sea’ or ‘ocean’. Languages are dictated by narrow walls, of geography and culture and globalization exposes many such interesting quirks contained therein.

Languages are structured and have rules, but they must be dynamic if they are to survive. English freely slept around with any language that was spoken in the British Isles and today shamelessly flaunts its bastard status, but is the Lingua franca of the world (excluding, of course the Chinese sphere of influence).

Supporters of Indian regional languages go to ludicrous lengths to ensure linguistic survival amidst English’s sweeping influence. Pro-Dravidians argue against ‘Sanskritization’ of Tamil abhorring any word of Indo-European origin. Perhaps they would do well to remember that several words for long considered pure Sanskrit have recently been discovered to have Dravidian parentage. Indo-Aryan languages have several unique traits that differentiate them from other indo-European languages, mainly the presence of several Dravidian traits. Sanskrit was barely an infant when Tamil already had two epics in its repertoire. In a peninsula of overwhelming Aryan tongues, Dravidian languages are the neglected children, but Indo-Aryan purportedly was built on a Dravidian sub-stratum. Borrowing terms and code-mixing may give language a unique flavor, but evolutionally they provide a rock solid foothold for survival. The Dravidian language family is unusual in that it shows no relation to any other language family. Proto-Dravidian evolved into Tamil. Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Tulu and Kodava-Takk all seceded from it in the previous millennium.

Indian languages draw from a large pool of languages. Influences range from Persian and Latin to the rarer Elamite*. One often neglects the linguistic diversity that the India holds. Bound together for millennia in the sub-continent, people freely borrowed, snatched and stole, from each other in the pursuit of making the perfect mellifluous language. The future of Indian languages is secure, in that they are not monogamous, but promiscuous. Modern media only accelerates this tumultuous mixing from which eventually order and structure will emerge to form yet another language.

*The Elamite language was spoken in what is now south-western Iran sometime between the sixth to fourth centuries BC. Dravidian languages show a direct relation to Elamite. Some scholars also like to bring in the mysterious Indus valley civilization language under the umbrella of the Elamo-Dravidian family.

Tales of our times

Rosa works at the food court with me. The first day I was introduced to her, she was jokingly called ‘the dishwasher’. Throughout the semester, as I adjusted to changing variables in the new world, Rosa became my friend washing, rinsing, sanitizing dishes, sneaking out food and covering each other’s backs. As a pair of friends, this was as odd as it gets. She spoke in a pidgin English, remnant of some African tongue, I spoke in a just-learning-american-accent English. I reverted to Indian English in her company and found that we understood each other better. Rosa was Sudanese. She told me of her life in south Sudan, daughter of a local chieftain. Testimony to the turbulent times we live in, and to Africa’s forever changing clumsy dynamics, strife broke out in Sudan and their possessions were reduced to nothing. She recalled how she and her husband decided to flee one night. Pregnant and penniless they boarded a barge on the Nile, northwards to Egypt. As Rosa rested in Alexandria, her husband scoured the Sudanese diaspora to bail them out. Another barge ride southwards to Cairo and heavy bribes later (Gold. “I am bereft of all my trinkets now” she sighed) husband and wife found themselves like millions of others before them, at the gates of liberty. New York City on a cold winter morning welcomed them as she delivered her son.

Today, seven years later, they have added 2 daughters to their family. Rosa managed to sponsor her brother and sister’s children all of whom she supports. While her children speak in clipped accents, she longs for the desert and the mountains.

Another semester later, I am employed in an office. As I write code in ungrammatical languages B Beng calls me to join her for lunch. B has got food from Taco Bell. I am very happy. B is another page of the same book, different chapter. A different time, Southeast Asia in the late 70’s. Surviving Pol Pot’s holocaust in rural Cambodia, B’s father was a member of the army, unable to resist the government, unable to participate in the massacre. Mrs Beng, managed to sneak her children out in the dead of the night to nearby Thailand. B grew up in Bangkok unmindful of the horrors just miles away. Aged four, B and family came to USA, abandoned Buddhism and found elusive peace. B’s mother still has nightmares of terrible times, her husband finally succumbed more out of mental anguish than anything else. My name means ‘flower’, B says. Today she drives a Civic, funds her family and is a proud American. “I am frustrated with the way things are in Cambodia. We are reduced to peddling artifacts of Angkor Wat” she says and proudly shows off her name, tattooed across her ankle, in Khmer.

Two different places. Two women. It would be childish to call them brave. Foolish to praise them. Fortitude and Hope, they define. My salaam to Rosa and Mrs. Beng.