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And then there was this story of Ruth, Naomi and Boaz with cute pictures. I am not ashamed at this ripe age to confess that it brought tears to my eyes, at the plight of the comely Ruth. The age of twelve is full of strange adolescent emotions. It is rather surprising since the names, the places, and the Biblical culture were all so alien to our seaside Muthukur.
which they used to sing without understanding a single syllable. Such was the power of Hindi films. The language maybe alien but the culture was familiar.
Not so the Hollywood movies that used to be screened in the only theater that used to show them at Vizagh, the Leela Mahal. The university elite used to patronize them without following a single word of the dialogue (I still don't). Most of us wanted to see skin, white.
Prejudice against alien tongues is funny. We had a granny in Nellore in the early 1950s. She never left Nellore. One day her son returned after attending an interview at Hyderabad and was talking about Kachiguda and Kawadiguda. I still recall vividly her uproarious laughter on hearing these 'funny' names of places. She thought that folks living there were not only aliens but barbarians. She was at home with her own Nellore's Santhapet and Ranganayakulapet. And perhaps would have okayed Madras's Nungambakam and Kodambakam.
She can be forgiven...she was widowed in her childhood.
Not so Prof AVKR who joined IIT KGP in 1965 along with me from Vizagh. He was senior to me by a decade and we were sharing an apartment BF-1/6 for six months. When he first heard our Bengali Technical Assistant, Nepu-da, ordering his attendant Montu:
"Du cup chai thada thadi neye aesho",
AVKR couldn't contain himself and was laughing uproariously. When Nepu-da asked him what was so funny, he blurted out:
"Thada thadi...thada thadi...thada thadi...how funny!"
Nepu-da was curious and asked him what was its equivalent in Telingi. And AVKR replied:
"Gaba Gaba"
And it was Nepu-da's turn to fall from his stool laughing:
"Gaba gaba...gaba gaba...gaba gaba...ki odbhut!"
...Posted by Ishani
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wiki
Perhaps the selfsame song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
...Keats Ode to a Nightingale
For over the forty years I was at IIT KGP from 21 to 62, I never recalled my school years at our Village Muthukur. It was not that I was terribly busy with my job. Rather I was idling half the time thinking about things other than Physics.
But after settling down in Hyderabad post-retirement, I have often gone back to my school days. Indeed I made a nostalgic trip to the place with my wife and son. That is perhaps because I am now fully idle but that is not all. Old age is tricky. No wonder it is called the second childhood.
We spoke Telugu at home and school. And the first alien tongue we learned in school was English. But although its alphabet and pronunciation were funny and so different from our phonetic mother tongue, we never felt that we were learning a foreign language. I don't know why. Maybe because we were ruled directly by the British and Father was an English teacher.
I loved my English text books. They were the only ones that had splendid pictures in them. I still recall the story in our Class IX about Kingfisher and Woodpecker. It had cute pictures of the kingfisher fishing off the river in full flight and the woodpecker getting busy holding on to his tree trunk. The imprint was so lasting that after a good half century I blogged a nursery rhyme on the two little birds:
And then there was this story of Ruth, Naomi and Boaz with cute pictures. I am not ashamed at this ripe age to confess that it brought tears to my eyes, at the plight of the comely Ruth. The age of twelve is full of strange adolescent emotions. It is rather surprising since the names, the places, and the Biblical culture were all so alien to our seaside Muthukur.
On the other hand the text books of our own Telugu had lessons that were so full of ancient poems and turgid classical prose that they sounded more alien to me. None of us talked like that. And the text book had no pictures. And as Alice said:
"What is the use of a book without pictures or conversations?"
Our most shabby book was that of Hindi. I never opened it. Attendance to Hindi classes was compulsory. Also sitting for its exams.
The trouble was that our Hindi teacher knew only bookish Hindi. He was one of us, except he wore khadi and couldn't pass in his English paper. So he learned Hindi by postal coaching and got a couple of certificates from the Dakshin Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha. He was the ultimate bore. He ought to have attended Madam Scherbakova's Russian classes to learn how to teach a foreign language:
By the time we went to college, Hindi films and songs were a rage. I recall my Shakespeare Uncle, whose knowledge of Hindi was worse than mine, sprucing himself up at age 56 and leading his daughter and me to watch Pyasa at our moffuisl college town called Nidubrole. The hall was full and everyone was quietly watching the movie without understanding a single word of dialogue or songs. But it didn't seem to matter. And everyone in the audience was regaled by Johnny Walker's song:
which they used to sing without understanding a single syllable. Such was the power of Hindi films. The language maybe alien but the culture was familiar.
Not so the Hollywood movies that used to be screened in the only theater that used to show them at Vizagh, the Leela Mahal. The university elite used to patronize them without following a single word of the dialogue (I still don't). Most of us wanted to see skin, white.
Prejudice against alien tongues is funny. We had a granny in Nellore in the early 1950s. She never left Nellore. One day her son returned after attending an interview at Hyderabad and was talking about Kachiguda and Kawadiguda. I still recall vividly her uproarious laughter on hearing these 'funny' names of places. She thought that folks living there were not only aliens but barbarians. She was at home with her own Nellore's Santhapet and Ranganayakulapet. And perhaps would have okayed Madras's Nungambakam and Kodambakam.
She can be forgiven...she was widowed in her childhood.
Not so Prof AVKR who joined IIT KGP in 1965 along with me from Vizagh. He was senior to me by a decade and we were sharing an apartment BF-1/6 for six months. When he first heard our Bengali Technical Assistant, Nepu-da, ordering his attendant Montu:
"Du cup chai thada thadi neye aesho",
AVKR couldn't contain himself and was laughing uproariously. When Nepu-da asked him what was so funny, he blurted out:
"Thada thadi...thada thadi...thada thadi...how funny!"
Nepu-da was curious and asked him what was its equivalent in Telingi. And AVKR replied:
"Gaba Gaba"
And it was Nepu-da's turn to fall from his stool laughing:
"Gaba gaba...gaba gaba...gaba gaba...ki odbhut!"
...Posted by Ishani
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