HI-N-GLISH....

I just sipped in a cup of ICED MOCHA. Hence the adrenaline rush to write in one more eventful piece. The gaps and memory slots in the grey cells just got filled with caffeine and a touch of chocolate. Having posted my first week encounters in architecture; i thought i must add the essence of HINGLISH; a talent i discovered in me.

A month into studies; me, pakiya (panjak) and arya puttar (hitarth) were lazing in the college canteen discussing on trivial issues....college canteen aesthetics, fibre glass roofing, stone platforms, concrete seatings....(one of the subjects in the first year was building materials.) Architecture college was in same campus as all other engineering fields. Just a few classrooms in one building topped with a few scattered concrete domes, brickwork and iron windows. Signature of heritage value was prominent all over, includind the 1940's name - Maharaja Sayajirao.

The Scene: a passive campus, an active canteen, a few dogs running around chasing squirrels, me and friends....We walked up to the counter to order for lunch. I still hadn't gotten into a groove of ordering food....'Thaali' - was the terminology used for a plate of lunch which had some wierd vegetable curry, four roti's dipped in flour (might as well have eaten flour), half burnt rice, yoghurt and sweet daal. (Gujarati's are supposedly sweet in nature; so i guess they have gotten into a habit of spreading that sweetness, including food).

My turn to order, hence with bursting confidence, i said "ONE KHAALI"...., pakiya and arya were laughing. So was the cashier. Oops... i realized that I had just messed up the letters TH with KH.....(Khaali by the way meant, Empty!) Luckily my skin was a little dark with all the pollution in the air, so the redness out of embarassment didn't show.

Stuffing ourselves in with the colorful and 'nutritious' food; we resumed our conversation, which had moved on to the gals in the class (very few, and height limited to 4.5 ft on an average !!)....The enthralling subject was broken by a few ridiculous looking dogs barking to make their presence felt and trying to prove a point to the squirrels on the tree, who managed to grab rice flakes from the plates. Thats treacherous!! (stealing under their very noses)

I was in the mood for using my recently gathered knowledge of HINDI. So i turned to pakiya and asked him "Kutta ped pe chadh-enge to gir-enge, nahin?" (what i meant to ask was, wont the dog fall if he tried to climb the tree). I thought it was another comedy routine, as both my friends were almost choked by laughing as rice and daal spilled from their mouth.

Now, the only mistake i made was with the use of 'enge', apart from the sentence construction as well. It so happened that i was referring to the people who should be respected like the elderly as 'woh' and friends as 'aap'...and the same usage flowed through with those dogs. Yes, i happened to treat the street dogs with utmost respect!!... I stuck to english for the rest of the week.