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Aur Ek, Aur Ek and Aur Ek
By Karthik Raman ('95 EEE)
When I was leaving for
BITS, Pilani, everyone told me that I would only need English to
survive there. That the little Hindi I had learned as a third language
since 5th standard would be more than enough for "emergency purposes".
Unfortunately, no one remembered to tell this to all the dhobis, the
raediwalas, the mess workers, rickshaw walas and the restaurant owners
in the quaint little town in the middle of nowhere, otherwise called
Pilani. Consequently, there were quite a few embarrassing moments when
my Hindi did not keep pace with my thought process. However, my only
consolation was that, however bad my Hindi was, there were always
others who would beat me hands down when it came to making asses of
themselves.
The cool thing about BITS was that the best and the brightest from
every part of the country came there. However, Tamil Nadu and Andhra
Pradesh accounted for the majority presence there so much so that
Pilani came to be represented in our state maps (Actually, I once saw a
post card delivered wrongly to my hostel by a dyslexic postman who
misread Palani, the temple town. But I'm digressing here!). But what
bothered me so much was that while almost everyone, irrespective of
what state they hailed from, could speak fluent Hindi, the “shady
characters” that went from Tamil Nadu alone couldn't speak a
coherent sentence if our lives depended on this. I guess this is what
comes of living with a Government that has had a history of anti-Hindi
protests and probably still harbors illusions about making Tamil the
national language. So when it came to Hindi bloopers, some of the stuff
we said and did were legendary. For example, let me take you to the
‘camel milk’ incident. A bottle of camel milk was being
delivered outside a guy's hostel room everyday, even though he had
never asked for it. When this routine did not stop for a while, he
decided to do something about it. So he kept an alarm for 5 o' clock,
prompty woke up and waited for the milkman. When he heard the bottle
outside his door, he went out in a huff and, in what he perceived as
Hindi, told the milkman he did not want any milk from then on. Mission
accomplished, he came back and happily crashed for the rest of the day.
Understandably, he was quite proud of his achievement, and strutted
around the next day throwing some "saalas" and "arre yaars" for good
effect. This lasted all but one day. The next morning, he got up, came
out of his room only to find two bottles of camel milk, instead of one.
Yet another incident: a friend went to the coop buy a few notebooks. He
needed 15, but could only count till 10 in Hindi. So, he told the
shopkeeper he needed "dus notebooks ji" and patiently waited for them
to arrive. When the shopkeeper brought them to him, he came up with
this master stroke - "aur ek, aur ek, aur ek, aur ek and aur ek". My
EEE wing was not far behind. Once, we went to grab a bite at ANC (All
Night Canteen) around midnight. I had ordered masala dosa while my
friend "mandai" (big head bony body) had ordered a plain dosa. The
waiter, under the influence of a few hundred filterless beedis, mixed
up the orders. So mandai went up to him and loudly and clearly said
"uska dosa mera paas... mera dosa tera paas". We still haven't let him
forget that fateful night.
Another time, a guy was trying to negotiate with the jeep wala. After
some frenetic hand gestures and syllables that could have come straight
out of the Mayan civilization, he thought he had struck a great deal.
Only to be told by his friends later that he had managed to negotiate
250 rupees for the trip when the driver had been perfectly happy with
150. Turned out he was a little confused about "daed" and "daayi". I'm
still hopeful that someday, the genetic inconsistency that is solely
responsible for the 'Tamil and Hindi are mutually exclusive' syndrome
would be corrected as a result of inter-cultural marriages and more
Hindi movies starring Rajni Kanth.
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