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Saturday, July 12, 2008

Malayalee a.k.a Mallu

The funniest and funkiest word these days is "Mallu". At one point it was "sardar's"....like "sardar ka barah bhaj gaya" was a general terminology in school days.Now we mallu's have taken over the mantle. You wanna find one in the group, its easy wait until he speaks english.I remember my school english teacher Kurup Sir made a funny statement at our mallu-ite pronunciation. He loved british english more than his wife and kids.The extra effort he takes to pronounce each and every word would tickle our humour bone. Infact he was our comedian in all our skits and mimicries.Now i understand why he was stern on that point.

Once out of college, i hear my friends speaking english and compare it with mine...man we guys are funny. But may be this mind set to laugh at ourselves makes us stand out of the crowd. We speak fast, we give too much importance to vowels especially "O". If there was no "O" in english we would better learn portugese.My ILP co-ordinator Shainu varghese tried very hard to make me say 5 words in english properly. The whole class was laughing, but shainu was in no mood to give up.Atlast when i made it, the look on his face was like "thera kuch nahi hone waala". A sympathetic look at a loser to say the least. Now a days even movies have started taking a dig us at malayalee's(Hyderabadi Zaffrani Biriyani in "Cheeni Kum"). Man, i love that movie coz of this.

Enough said about our english, another featuristic characteristic in us is our liking for football. You see a football rolling you can expect a mallu around it.Every wednesday i play a league, after every match i meet up a new malayalee stud(stud as in imagine a malayalee stud with lungi). Yeah and we are quite interested in meeting another mallu.I dont see this in others except us and gul-tee's(dont confuse it with plain-T's or Striped-T's just simply Gul-T's aka Telugu). I have met people running across the aisles of Walmart and Kroeger hearing a mallu voice. Today coincidentally one of my colleague sitting 20 yards away came to me hearing me speaking malayalam on phone.First question is "Malayalee aanalle?"(I think you are a malayalee?) If the answer is yes, then "Naattil Evideya?" (from which part in kerala?).

Once i read in an article that most regionalistic people ever are spaniards, we indians are not back either.We have tamilian annachi's who form a core tamilian group speaking tamil alone even if others in the group dont understand (islandophobia) its very difficult to get in or get out of this group. Kannadiga's who speak hindi and hate tamilians coz of Cauvery river issue (this hatred is the bread and butter of the media and politicians). We have the big annayaru from andhra who them selves are split into Telenganas,Andhrites,Hyderabadians. And we mallu's we tend to dissolve into any group easily, coz most of us speak tamil and hindi.If you know these two you are a bread winner in bharat mahaan.

Another thing we own is communism and unwanted ideologies. Communism though is not unique, we share it with our fish eating brothers from bengal.Any mallu you pick will have an ideology and political principle of his own ( requirement is he/she should have done their college in kerala). Ideology strictly adhering to political ones though, A mallu sitting on Tea stall with a beedi in his hand and reading newspaper aloud is a very common scene in Kerala.

Back to our slang, we cannot just leave our 'O' and 'T' (mostly it will be "ttt"). Once i used the word 'honoured' which still no one understood, i had to virtually write it down in a paper and tell them. Think of a scenario when a Mallu becomes the PM of our country. His oath taking will be the most funniest video in Youtube.
I, OmanaKuttan Menon , do solemnly affirm that I will faithfully execute the office of Prime Minister of Repulic of India and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and the law and that I will devote myself to the service and well-being of the people of Republic of India.
Imagine a mallu saying Some thing like this.

Enough said, my point is we are a funny lot. But bring it on we are just loving the leg pulling.

Oll the Besttt...

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Hospital Diaries

Sitting midnight in a hospital, am gazing at nurse taking care of deepak. He is admittedfor tooth infection here in ohio medical center.So we have volunteered ourselves to take turn to stay with him in the hospital.Yes here it is, today is my turn. Apart from giving good company to deepak, gobbling his food+juice+icecreams, watching pretty nurseswalking across... my main motive is to bring up deepaks good old spirits. Deepak by the way is the only person i know in this world who became a bit tipsyon drinking huge amounts of Tropicana Orange Juice.The utmost care and attention that he receives from the doctors and nurses are truly remarkable.They make you feel like home to say the least, am sure the bill in the end doesn't.
So does this reminisce me through some old days?? Yes, sure it does. First time i went to hospital for a friend was for our great unnikuttan.Who apparently blocked a guys uppercut by his nose. Sounds funny eh?? he was bleeding like hell, the funny part was in the 'n' number of college fights ihave witnessed or heard this must be the strange one. Coz until 2-3 days unnibhai had no clue who boxed him down. Yes he was our batch's firstmartyr(just namesake) and is proud to shovel it through everybody's throat.
Next in line the war heroes Pacheni Pradeep and Dhobi Binu John.Man this was not funny, this was scary shit. You dont wanna see this again in life I can promise you that.Binu had a broken jaw coz of an iron rod blow and had to pass away with liquid food for 2-3 weeks. He would take lots of time just to eat an orange grain.Lying next to him, pacheni. With his Parx shirt drenched in blood, his mom and uncles sitting around that-weird-look towards us. Yeah those were the bloody days. We felt proud about our heroes, who fought for friends and party.God only knows what kind of troubles and problems they and their families had to go through. Binu John for that matter is no longer with us. April 2006, he passed away without stuttering a word to us.And for the many good things he did in his life, from poems to football to cricket to being a good brother to all of us. Sad that this still remains as a black mark to forgetin his life chapter.
And here comes Sudeep, my friend who sent me home that absurd evening warning me of a fight that might happen.I reached home and in a few moment i got the news sudeep is in hospital.I had to tell all the lie in the world to get out of house that night, teenager going out late night in kerala is equal to pouring him toddy some say. Suspicionwas the key word and if your dad is ex-military, life is just B-E-A-utiful. So sudeep had injuries everywhere in the back,arms and shoulders. But boy he waswas strong, mentally as well as physically. He was sitting stoutly like ever. He and mandan vava discussing about real madrid and barcelona. Girish and thotti werethe worrying souls reminding sudeep of medicines, injection and what not??
Not to mention when my dad was in hospital, gastroentritis and some kinda cyst growth in his small intestine. He was in utter pain, and a strong man like him seeing him crumble isa nightmare to all of us. He was rolling all over with pain and sweat, his adherence to spicy food was the killer i guess. Once he was recovering, he was back to his bestcracking jokes (most of them targeted at my mom),occassional flirting with nurses, giving lectures to doctors on his airforce heroics. Every one lending an ear to his stories is an absolute delight to watch. Mom was saying there were lot of people near our car to see him off and bid adieu. My sister says he changed his hospitalization into a vacation.
Its getting late, deepak is getting into a sound sleep. I would not want him to wake up by my keyboard clatter. GoodNight Tropicana Deepak!!