Toshted English

Read a very interesting article in BT this morning. Read on:

When was the last time you had a hankering for a nice, piping hot bowl of sweet corn and chikkun soop along with spicy chomin (chow mein) while driving down Marine Drive at night, or felt like grabbing a quick jain peeza or -- better still -- a tosted sendweech while on the move? Be it the peeza, chomin, soop or sendweech, there's a strange fascination for curious -- and spurious -- words. Mumbai's love affair with Bambaiyya continues to evolve.

Ram Naik, a sendweechwalla who operates in a Colaba street corner is unconcerned about the spellings he uses on his menu: "I have been doing this job for 15 years and it's mainly students from the St Anne's and Fort Convent schools who are my most loyal customers. They love the taste of my sandwiches." Clearly, if it sells, correct spellings are only a small consideration.

The mechanics of spelling seem to be evolving. You'd never guess that a shop with the sign tair punchar (as there is one such shop in Lower Parel) is actually a tyre repair shop. When asked about this mangling of the language, the owner of the shop Mahadeo grins and affirms that it wasn't he who wrote the sign. In front of his shop stands a parked truck, with the sign edibal oail (edible oil) painted in mustard yellow across the front. The driver, Charan Singh, said that spellings didn't matter as long as the meaning of the contents was conveyed clearly.

Punchared tairs and edibal oails aside, it's also apparent that street food vendors have taken matters -- as well as the traditional manchurian -- into their own hands. Almost everywhere, the word 'Chinese' has morphed by various degrees of ease into Chinease or Chines. You'll find these words painted in dodgy-looking cantonese style on the front of nearly every red food cart.

Says Rahul D'Costa, a marketing executive: "The other day I was walking down Crawford Market and I came across a stall festooned with the sign 'poplet curry with Rs 5 extra for rice plate'. I was also urged to wash down my meal with a tall, refreshing and in-season glass of mongo jooz (mango juice)."

And while there's a very slim chance these words may find their way into the English dictionary, Mumbai's craving for ubiquitous sendweech shows no signs of abating Horn OK Please?

DD2k

Golgol @ Kresit Foyer



Jumping the hell out ourselves!



Going back to where they came from!

My Room Is IN Mess!

Although, my room is more than 50 mts away from THE MESS but my room in fact is in mess. Look at 7-pin cloth hanger. It has GP's Jacket hanging from its second pin from right. Truly speaking, it is not a jacket; it is some sort of device that is usually used to guard against something which goes past your ears making a gushing sound. Not so interestingly, this device should have been with GP almost a year ago. I do not know why there are two buckets in my room when on any normal day I use none. On probing further into the matter, I found out that one of them has old newspaper stuffed into it and there is Ghushe lying on my bed, and is responsible for both buckets being in my room. Interestingly Ghushe himself I must admit is for all practical purposes, mostly useless.

Please note that a wire goes from northeastern corner of my room to centre of the eastern wall of the room casting a shadow, which is perfectly symmetrical and partially encircles a strategically placed cobweb. Although I have never smoked nor did 'Pooja' in my entire span of existence, but there are 13 different brands of matchboxes on my table, which also happens to be supporting a Manicure Set, containing three different kinds of nail-cutters. By matter of pure coincidence, thumb-pins and a notice board have decided not to co-exist in my room and now in my room, only thumb pins lie here and there, mostly here, under my mattress.

Due to loss of my shaving kit in controversially unknown circumstances, a soft leather TT racket cover has successfully replaced it. A perfectly normal lock rests next to it, acts as an agarbatti holder, and is rarely used to lock my room, which unfortunately happens to be the original purpose of its existence. It is now well established among the inmates of my wing that the weighted cumulative randomness index of my room happens to be significantly greater than that for radii of bubbles formed by shaving gel when used with water at 60-degree Celsius.