HORN OK TATA

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"Buri nazarwale' tere' muh kale' "

"nannu ventadake' naa swapna sundari"

"HORN OK TATA"

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Now, don't look at my grammar or spelling..

The above 3 are sample slogans I often see on the back of trucks in my part of the country.

The first one (from Hyderabadi Urdu) roughly translates to:

"You, who cast Evil Eyes--May your faces blacken!"

The second one means:

"Don't chase me, Oh my Dream Girl!"

There are hundreds of explanations for the last one:

"Horn OK Tata"

but I find Farooq Dhondy's most plausible.

This slogan is a relic of the single track dusty roads on which our vehicles had to ply on our so-called National Highways till everything dramatically changed for the better and India started shining for everyone but the NDA.

Indeed our transformation from the Hindu Growth Rate Country (1.1%) to an Emerging Economy (8.5%) is typified by its new world-class Highways and Airports (my son testifies that our new Hyderabad Greenfield Airport is among the best in the world; and my son is no soulful romantic of the Nehru Generation like me...he means business)

According to Dhondy, our resident truck driver asks the chap behind who wishes to overtake him to first blow his "Horn"; then wait till his right hand waves like a free-style swimmer: "Go ahead; OK!"; and as he passes by safely, his right hand turns upward waving the cheerful signal: "Ta-Ta Bye Bye Have a Nice Drive!"... no Road Rage those days like I read recently a Pilot ran his new car over his 'Scratch-Offender' coming out to apologize... just half a dozen times back and forth over his moribund torso; and the poor chap had to wait airily a whole day to get his bail...

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The very first day I shifted from my Village School to my University town, Vizagh, I learned two new and great words from my 4-year-old Convent-Going niece: "OK & Tata".

I guessed the meaning of these two golden words by intuition, too shy to ask a tiny lady.

And to this day the etymology of these remains obscure and controversial, particularly OK.

All that can be said for sure is that OK is an Americanism, while Ta-ta is British (apparently from baby-talk).

Both are flash words and for these 50 years and more have remained as popular as ever (My D-i-L brandishes these two words constantly at our one-year-old Ishani)

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But SDM was no American (he was as British as Gandhi, Nehru or Jinnah, who I doubt ever used OK in speech or writing).

One evening in 1974 when SDM and I were chatting in the Physics First Floor veranda, two of his Final Year girl students were passing by trying their best to avoid him. but they fell on his radar screen, and he asked: "How did your Exam go?"

His daughter Mampi kept quiet (the taste of the pudding is in the night at home!); while Sujata, the other kid, hastily replied: "Oa..Kay!"; and the two scampered.

He looked at me and wondered: "What funny lingo these girls talk nowadays!" and I had to translate to him that that particular "OK" meant "so-so".

For, I have noticed, at least in India, OK is a buzz-word with multiple meanings depending on how it is uttered, and in its unlimited outfits (it is like a girl dressed up in a variety of clothes):

When my son says: "Oh OK!" he means: "Now I get it!".

When my Printer asks: "OK, sir?" he means: "Any more Devils?"

When my son handed over his cell-phone to her after their tete-a-tete in the Swagat Restaurant before finally sewing up their alliance, I asked Sailaja (whom I had interviewed a couple of days earlier on the Pavement near her Office, with my wife as a spectator quark):

"Well?"

and she said somewhat resignedly:

"Hm...OK!", she meant:

"Do I really have a choice? {;-}"

When my Faculty Hostelmate RK used to wave: "Okey-Dokey" he meant: "Filching your fag..Don't Cry!"

When our QM Teacher at AU (an Experimental Spectroscopist without any delusions of grandeur) used to smile and say: "OK naa?", he meant:

"Pardon me, this is all I know; don't ask questions and you won't be told lies"

...there!..there is Humpty Dumpty's glory for you!

Finally when my Relatives born and brought up in Tamilnadu say:

"Wakey! Waakey!! Waaakey!!!"

they mean:

"Get lost now!!!"

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