Tamil – Ramana's Musings

Kooja.

This is called kooja in Tamil and Phirkicha Tambya in Marathi. It is a vessel with a screw on cap which used to be store and carry drinking water.

Pre-filled plastic bottles have now replaced these but, during my childhood this was seen during all train and bus journeys.

The following image is a caricature of an Indian politician with two yes men behind him.
Yes men are till today called Koojas in Tamil Nadu as they used to carry water for their bosses in such vessels.

In Hindi and other North Indian languages, they are called chamchas the original word still used in regular conversations means a spoon.

Have you ever been a kooja/chamcha or had one? I have both.

Mother Tongue.

The above image is just the tip of the iceberg in India. According to the Census of India of 2001, India has 122 major languages and 1599 other languages. With that background, let me tell you my problem/s.

My late mother’s tongue was a mixture of Malayalam and Tamil spoken by a community called Palghat Iyers. My late father’s was pure Tamil. In deference to the latter’s comfort, the former changed to speaking the Tamil spoken by the latter and so I grew up speaking that Tamil.

What is my Mother Tongue?

My late wife’s mother was a Telugu, and her father was a Bengali. They spoke Urdu or English at home and my wife did not know either Telugu or Bengali.

At our home, we spoke mostly English and Hindi now, and our son grew up using both.

What is my son’s Mother Tongue?

My daughter in love’s mother is a Bengali and her late father was a Maharashtrian. She grew up speaking Marathi at her home. She has moved into our home where she too speaks Hindi and English mostly but, Marathi for effect when needed.

Just supposing I get a grandchild what will be her/his Mother Tongue?

How do I solve this conundrum when the census taker comes visiting?

Winnowing Basket And Sieve.

This is a message in Tamil.

What it conveys is: “The winnowing basket and the sieve are both implements necessary to separate what is needed from what is not. While the former will remove what is not needed and retain what is needed. The latter will remove what is needed and retain what should be thrown away. Let us reflect on what our mind is like. The winnowing basket or the sieve?

On reflection, I flatter myself that mine is mostly like the winnowing basket. I have trained myself to be like that and to the best of my recollection, I don’t retain the negativity that comes my way, thanks to modern communication methods.

There are however impressions left in the mind from when my mind had been like the sieve which are difficult to remove, due to the impact that they had on me when they were formed. I am working on them.

What about you?

My Favourite Movie Star.

It is extremely difficult to choose one favourite star for me as I see movies in three languages. My earliest memories of movies revolve around those with Sivaji Ganesan in Tamil movies then followed English movies with Johny Weismuller as Tarzan and then to Hindi with Raj Kapoor as the star to admire.

And as I grew up into adulthood, so many kept coming in and going out that I never really developed the peculiar Indian trait of Hero worship and would see films for the overall effect rather than for the hero or heroine.

For this post however, I have chosen Robert De Niro for a number of reasons and I shall write them down as they occur to me.

The first movie that I saw with him was Godfather II and I was hooked. The last I saw of him was in The Intern. In between, I have seen a great many of them including those of his younger days like the The Taxi Driver, The Raging Bull etc mostly through DVDs or via cable TV. I cannot think of one where he let me down. Whether it was Romance, Action, or Comedy, he came up trumps every time. His versatility and ability to adapt to his costars is outstanding, and that is why he is my favourite movie star. Moreover, I would like to restrict my choice to English cinema and thus the choice of De Niro.

I know that I disappoint my regular reader blogger friend Tammy who would have preferred my choice being Sean Connery. Let me assure her that he would be my second choice!

Topic for today’s LBC post was suggested by me. You can read Shackman’s and Pravin’s takes at their respective blogs.

First Impressions.

I want to share a story which has been inspired by a post by Nick.

For many years now I have been seeing an elderly gentleman briskly walking every evening in our local joggers’ park. I have often heard him talk in Tamil with a companion while walking but somehow I kept my distance as having come to know that he was a retired senior government official, I thought it prudent that I don’t get involved and let off my favourite invectives about our bureaucrats.

Another friend who has been friendly with him however had other ideas and recently introduced the two of us to each other and I found that he was a person well worth knowing and not at all the ogre I had expected him to be. We now meet regularly at the park and try and spend some time together as well as we get to speak our mother tongue Tamil which otherwise we don’t get to speak much. We have also found that there are many things that we have in common and so the friendship is blossoming quite well.

I am glad that I made friends with him and I am also glad that some of the dire things that Nick talks about have not taken place, at least in this instance.

The Lucy Effect.

Manjiree, Ranjan, Ramesh and I had gone to see a film on Wednesday and after the film went shopping in the mall just below the multiplex where we had seen the film.

After shopping, Ranjan and Manjiree went off to get some medicines from a chemist in the mall, leaving Ramesh and me to walk at our pace to the lifts to go down to the parking level.

As we were doing just that, one matronly lady halted me in my tracks and asked me for directions to a big retailer and on learning that I was ignorant, excused herself but asked me if I was from the armed forces. I was taken aback, but responded saying no, and I was just a civilian when she responded that my bearing and attire gave the impression of a military officer and that is why she had approached me in the first place. In the meanwhile a gent strolled up and she introduced him as her husband and we exchanged names while shaking hands. That took her off into a joy as she said that her brother’s name was the same as mine and asked me how old I was!

These developments may sound corny to my readers but this is exactly what and how it all happened. I simply did not get any time to think of doing anything else but to answer her machine gun style questioning. She then asked me about which part of the country I was from and on learning that I was from the same place as she and her husband switched over to our mother tongue and for the next few minutes she told me all about her moving from Delhi to Pune, about her two daughters, about my gothra to see if I had a son of marriageable age for her younger daughter, and finally she stopped after asking why I was using a cane. Despite my trying to get the husband to participate in the discussions, he simply enjoyed the Lucy effect on me with much bemusement!

In the meanwhile Manjiree and Ranjan landed up and on being introduced to them, she took off with Manjiree in Tamil which the former cannot understand or speak and that kind of brought things to an end but, not before the lady complained to Manjiree that her husband does not wear the kind of clothes that I was wearing despite having a wardrobe full of them! While she was talking with Manjiree, I went to a nearby shop and found where the shop that was her destination and informed her. The two of them then tooted off with much waving and goodbyes, leaving us to find our way to the lift.

The story does not stop there. In the car on our way back home, Ramesh simply exploded with frustration that strange women do not approach him with such abandon and wondered what he could do to become such a magnet! I advised him to learn Tamil and to emulate a military bearing. What other advice could I have given him? His response? That lady is abnormal. If that lady is reading this I am sure that her response would be: