North East is so cute yaa!
I have said this before and I say it again that for now, I am glad to be back from the land where everything is “so cute yaa”. “Hey, look at that kid, he’s so cute ya!” “That dog is so cute yaa!” (The localites would surely find this amazing – people from Mumbai calling their breakfast cute.) It wouldn’t have been long before every hill, every tree, every fern and every sparrow began to look cute.
Imagine a father sparrow coming home one evening and telling his kids, “You %$@^%!! How many times have I told you not to drop your droppings all over the floor of the nest? And you have the cheek to do this on the very day when some stupid tourists call me cute, you…”
Every place we went to had a sinister cuteness hovering about it. All of a typical Mizo village in Aizawl was cute, including where the head tribesman kept his water bottles, where he shat, where he kept his women and chicken and the names of each of these abodes. One of them read Lal In – which an ignorant Malayalee would think is the abode of Mohanlal.
Well, despite the excessive use of the word ‘cute’, everything in the North East was cute in a way. There were many things that one couldn’t imagine seeing like trees laden with purple flowers. There were amusing sounds to hear and giggle. Then there were amusing names of people and of places.
Mizoram, it seems, holds an unofficial record for the maximum number of funny-sounding names. So it wouldn’t be surprising to run into people named ‘Everfriendly’. A weary member of the trip lamented that she would love to marry someone named ‘Never Walk’.
The term Mao means stone. So there are these triplets intellectually named Mao, Patthar and Stone. What is more interesting is that these names often come from random English words they caught from someone’s conversation or some English word they caught in a film, that they liked the sound of. (Which takes me back to a show by Russel Peters who once wondered how to react if someone called you ‘a fuckin’ blowjob’) So, there are funny names like Stormy Weather and Bhavya.
With due respect to the sentiments of my North Eastern brethren, I add that the names of places in that part of the country sound like they are filled with phlegm, like comedian Jeff Dunham's dead puppet terrorist Achmed. There are places named Hmawngzawi and Khliehriat. Wonder if they colloquially use abbreviations for these names. “Hey, where you off to?” “Aw, me…ah…no…awww…ya…go to…aww…ya…K.” Or “Hey, you wanna run me down to the H-Wi?”
Name, place, animal, thing just got more exciting. String a few letters together to make a completely random word that remotely sounds like an organ off the human anatomy and you are in a village in the North East! No kidding. Get a map of the region and catch Pynursla, Lakadong, Lumding and Lungding (could be distant cousins), Haflong and Longpi.
Meanwhile, in other news, dhinchak dhinchak has become a standard entity on treks small and big alike. For those who came in late, or never came in, dhinchak dhinchak is the story of how some guy called Shivaji gatecrashes a party being hosted at the Le Malvan (the only underwater hotel in India) – used as a teaser to dedicate a song to a person, situation or an object.
And it so happened that these dedications last only for 15-20 seconds and then fizzle out to make way for the next dedication. The game never ends as ceremoniously as it begins. It only fades out when the people who know the lyrics come to know of their might and pull out or drop asleep. The alternative is that something interesting happens right when a dedication is happening, like a flat tyre or an accident.
These so called dedications are also sung as stand-alone songs in antakshari style and rapid fire style for approximately six hundred and seventy two times. Remember that if you change vehicles…you’ll also have to sing those very songs in the other vehicle…that will make it one thousand three hundred and forty times! Then you go about humming all of these songs to yourself for the next fortnight. Bah! Whoever thought of making these songs so catchy surely knew what he was doing.
I might sound like I have had enough of the northeastern states but I am going back there to steal their folk songs. I think they are cool with their throaty + nasal vocals, earthy beats and homemade stringed instruments. Think I’ll make that my mission number two.
Hey, this article is so cute yaa!
Monday, May 25, 2009
Mumbai Guhwahati Express S7 31 - All Alone
I had the opportunity of travelling alone from Mumbai to almost Guwahati, baby sitting a seat, protecting it from 500 others who would kill to sit were I sat. I was amidst strangers who did not seem to like the fact that I wanted to sit with a little space around me. So, there I was baby-sitting my luggage like mother sheep guarding her lambs from the very bad wolf.
I spent a good half of the first day cribbing to myself through clenched teeth about the lousy situation and why I couldn’t be part of a group that would crack up at my wisecracks and not so wise cracks and play OHNO with me. Why did I have to be stuck up with a bunch of losers so bored that all of them watched goggle-eyed as another guy stood up on his seat and placed three very interesting guavas into his bag on the upper berth in slow motion – one by one? Each movement of the man was like breaking news. “Dekhiye kis tarah ek aadmi NE apne seat par chadhkar ek nahi, do nahi, balki teen amrood apne bag ke andar ghusaaye…”
The TTC, I bet, feels more important than Pratibha Patil feels inside the Rastrapati Bhavan. This lanky guy wearing black clothes is suddenly God for my fellow travelers. They want their tickets confirmed and give him looks that range from pious-innocent to smug-bribey.
And thus, interesting traits of people around me began to ooze out, which is when I decided to stop cribbing and make the most of the situation. Who knows, one of these could be characters in my first film.
A couple sat to my left. The man spoke a mix of what seemed to be a mix of Bengali, Hindi and Awadhi. His female partner looked obviously Nepali and even spoke like Bollywood’s caricatures of Gorkha watchmen. Though not too much into PDA, I was of the opinion that they were all set to star in the next controversial mobile clip that people around the world would download for $ 50. What the woman had to tell the man had to be very important stuff because she yelled every word of it. I wonder why the guy wanted to know about how the woman had hit another woman (who was washing utensils) for staring at her. The man kept chewing sachet after sachet of Kolhapuri gutkha and the woman kept pulling at his hair for this habit. Wonder if the man was putting up with all this because he thought she would make up for all of this later? (Wink wink).
Their eating habits psyched me out. The food from the railway pantry car is akin to the food Raveena Tandon feeds her pets. Ya, so there are a couple of things in the dal that you cannot really eat like long pieces of fried chilly, pieces of the foil etc. so the couple took out all of this and placed them on the seat while they devoured their food with all possible limbs. Post lunch the woman raked off the residue from the seat with those very hands, leaving dal tracks all over the seat. Aur phir Bhagwan Ramchandra ne us nanhi gilahri ko apne haathon mein uthaayi… aur apni ungliyon se uske peeth par teen reshayen banayi… The guy then wiped the wet dal with a gammchha (towel) and proceeded to sit on it.
Remnants of the dal could still be seen on the woman’s saree a day after that particular lunch session. The man switched from Kolhapuri to another locally available gutkha brand. He also developed a rare mental condition where he would get down and run to the water faucet with at every possible railway station.
On my right sat a bouncer in a dark blue Sando vest. He could give Yoko Zuna a few tips on muscle toning. Besides entertaining the broom that grew out of his armpits, his occupation throughout the day was to rile salesman, interrogating them with pointed questions about the price, quality and quality of their wares. He even volunteered to sit on a plastic torch after its salesman claimed that it was unbreakable. When he wasn’t playing CID with them, he would squeeze out his mobile phone out of his tight pants and make calls to people inquiring about the number of sacks of cement they used to build their new house and the shampoo they put on their head.
A whiny kid sat in front with his mom who looked so much like Shashikala that I almost asked her for an autograph. The 8-year old whined for everything from his toothpaste to his right to sit at the window. The whining was beginning to get to my nerves and I would’ve stuck my only black pen into the imp’s ear if it wasn’t for redemption that came in the form of Anish who asked me to join the rest of the gang in a compartment across seven seas.
Not that the rest of the journey was uneventful…but all of that is another story.
I had the opportunity of travelling alone from Mumbai to almost Guwahati, baby sitting a seat, protecting it from 500 others who would kill to sit were I sat. I was amidst strangers who did not seem to like the fact that I wanted to sit with a little space around me. So, there I was baby-sitting my luggage like mother sheep guarding her lambs from the very bad wolf.
I spent a good half of the first day cribbing to myself through clenched teeth about the lousy situation and why I couldn’t be part of a group that would crack up at my wisecracks and not so wise cracks and play OHNO with me. Why did I have to be stuck up with a bunch of losers so bored that all of them watched goggle-eyed as another guy stood up on his seat and placed three very interesting guavas into his bag on the upper berth in slow motion – one by one? Each movement of the man was like breaking news. “Dekhiye kis tarah ek aadmi NE apne seat par chadhkar ek nahi, do nahi, balki teen amrood apne bag ke andar ghusaaye…”
The TTC, I bet, feels more important than Pratibha Patil feels inside the Rastrapati Bhavan. This lanky guy wearing black clothes is suddenly God for my fellow travelers. They want their tickets confirmed and give him looks that range from pious-innocent to smug-bribey.
And thus, interesting traits of people around me began to ooze out, which is when I decided to stop cribbing and make the most of the situation. Who knows, one of these could be characters in my first film.
A couple sat to my left. The man spoke a mix of what seemed to be a mix of Bengali, Hindi and Awadhi. His female partner looked obviously Nepali and even spoke like Bollywood’s caricatures of Gorkha watchmen. Though not too much into PDA, I was of the opinion that they were all set to star in the next controversial mobile clip that people around the world would download for $ 50. What the woman had to tell the man had to be very important stuff because she yelled every word of it. I wonder why the guy wanted to know about how the woman had hit another woman (who was washing utensils) for staring at her. The man kept chewing sachet after sachet of Kolhapuri gutkha and the woman kept pulling at his hair for this habit. Wonder if the man was putting up with all this because he thought she would make up for all of this later? (Wink wink).
Their eating habits psyched me out. The food from the railway pantry car is akin to the food Raveena Tandon feeds her pets. Ya, so there are a couple of things in the dal that you cannot really eat like long pieces of fried chilly, pieces of the foil etc. so the couple took out all of this and placed them on the seat while they devoured their food with all possible limbs. Post lunch the woman raked off the residue from the seat with those very hands, leaving dal tracks all over the seat. Aur phir Bhagwan Ramchandra ne us nanhi gilahri ko apne haathon mein uthaayi… aur apni ungliyon se uske peeth par teen reshayen banayi… The guy then wiped the wet dal with a gammchha (towel) and proceeded to sit on it.
Remnants of the dal could still be seen on the woman’s saree a day after that particular lunch session. The man switched from Kolhapuri to another locally available gutkha brand. He also developed a rare mental condition where he would get down and run to the water faucet with at every possible railway station.
On my right sat a bouncer in a dark blue Sando vest. He could give Yoko Zuna a few tips on muscle toning. Besides entertaining the broom that grew out of his armpits, his occupation throughout the day was to rile salesman, interrogating them with pointed questions about the price, quality and quality of their wares. He even volunteered to sit on a plastic torch after its salesman claimed that it was unbreakable. When he wasn’t playing CID with them, he would squeeze out his mobile phone out of his tight pants and make calls to people inquiring about the number of sacks of cement they used to build their new house and the shampoo they put on their head.
A whiny kid sat in front with his mom who looked so much like Shashikala that I almost asked her for an autograph. The 8-year old whined for everything from his toothpaste to his right to sit at the window. The whining was beginning to get to my nerves and I would’ve stuck my only black pen into the imp’s ear if it wasn’t for redemption that came in the form of Anish who asked me to join the rest of the gang in a compartment across seven seas.
Not that the rest of the journey was uneventful…but all of that is another story.
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