Aami Tomake Bhaalo Bashi!

Before Malayalam, there was my expertise in Bangla. Yes, and I do love you all.

I am terrible at languages. But in my head, I am an expert.

And that is why the last section of my CV reads:- “Nodding acquaintance of Bangla, Odiya, Assamese, Punjabi, Marathi, Tamil, Bhojpuri, and Malayalam”.

Just like ‘national interest’, ‘nodding acquaintance’ can mean anything.

Anyhow, this list is compiled on the basis of:- (a) the states I have traveled to for reporting, (b) the Tamil I learnt as a five year old in Vellore, (c) the fact that I am a Bihari (and it would be a shame to not write Bhojpuri, while in reality my grandparents came from the part that spoke Maghai and I speak none of these), (d) my absolute obsession with Malayalam films (I somehow have willed myself to believe that if anyone speaks to me in Malayalam the subtitles will float before my eyes) and (e) last but not the least, I am from Jamshedpur and worked in The Telegraph so “Arre, how can you not know Bangla”.

Keno, Ki Oshubidha aka What is the problem.

Twisting Shakespeare a bit — some are born acquainted, some achieve acquaintance, and some have acquaintance thrust upon them. Bangla falls in that last category.

How could I not know Bangla?

I was in college and was returning home, on the Purushottam Express, a young chap insisted on talking to me in Bangla. Of course, I knew that ‘ghoomochchi’ meant ‘sleeping’ and not ‘roaming around’, that everything—cigarette, water, food—is eaten, and that there was a “Chirodini tumi je aamar” but he was out of my very limited syllabus.

I tried telling him—at first, nicely and then a little curtly— that I wasn’t a Bengali but he chose to remain oblivious to this little nugget of information.

Finally, my school friend, who had had enough, decided to put us all out of our collective miseries. She whispered a response to me. I rehearsed it in my head a few times—this was me playing Chinese Whispers with myself.

And when he was just about to launch into another conversation, I looked him in the eye, raised my hand and said “Darao. Aamaar matha yer bangali bhasha dugbe na, orthat ammaar shonge bangali bhasha bolbe na”. This very loosely translated means “I don’t understand the language so don’t speak to me in Bangla”. This I am told is far from ideal but it worked then.

I have been unleashing my version of the language on whoever thinks ‘How can I not’ plus the 3 friends — 1 Odia and 2 Bongs — from The Telegraph.

In the first category, I have had Bihari (lived their whole life in Calcutta) and Odia colleagues talking to me in Bangla—For me, it was like meeting on a middle ground but for them it was like “she is a Bengali, let’s talk to her in Bangla”. And it worked. Or so we thought.

With the ‘3 friends’, these are mostly WhatsApp conversations. “Plane kobe tulbe” “Tumi Kobe Nambe” “Choktho bhenge debe” “Tui kee bolchis” “Aami Bujhlam” “Kee koruchonti”. Of course, this is all gibberish. Just let’s say Amma, Mashi and Soy get me.

That is Amma, Soy and Mashi (R-L) plus me and Jabbar. Our WhatsApp group is called JaTa which for a few days I thought was the short for Jamshedpur-Tatanagar.

So a little bit out of our friendship and largely out of the entertainment it provides, they have let my Bangla be. But I had no such luck with Tara.

We were returning from the CR Park maidan puja pandal on that Ashtami afternoon in 2014. I don’t quite recall whether we had bhog or not but I do remember a mithai dabba I was carrying. Udit, Shivani and Thaamu were engrossed in some very serious ‘grown up’ conversation, while Tara (3 yo) and I, breaking into a trot once in a while, were busy playing ‘I spy’.

Tired, I tried slipping in a break luring her with mithai. “Tara, Mishti khaabo?”

She looked confused. I was offering her the sweet but I was saying that “I will eat the sweet” (and that too with a question mark at the end).

Squinting in the sun, she looked at me with a mixed expression of bewilderment and benevolence and said “No Savvy. Mishti khaa-BEY?”.

Tara filled her little mouth with the mithai and went back to playing ‘I spy’ but not before giving me that “Bujhecho?” look.

I obliged with a look of my own “Hain Bujhechchi”. Lesson learnt.

L: Tara's Bujhecho look. R: My "Hain..." look.

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This was written for the prompt “An Unlikely Teacher” as part of my Ochre Sky Writing Workshop with

Natasha Badhwar

and

Raju Tai

in July last year.