The other day a group of labourers whom we had hired for
some farmwork were discussing something loudly and the word “ALGOL” kept popping
up. I strained my ears to hear it
clearly – could it be that these folks were actually discussing the merits of
some 3rd generation programming language?
A few days later we were planning a trip to the market (O
yes we actually ‘plan’ a trip to avoid multiple visits to the market) so I
asked our farm hand whether we needed to buy anything for the farm. “2 Daab and 1 Argol” he replied in konkani. Strange. What in the world were these things? Well, he elaborated – Daab is a specially
entwined nylon rope used for tethering
the cows to the metal ring in the cow shed.
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| A Daab - used to tether cows - available at all the little shops that dot the marketplace. |
And Argol not Algol is a 5 foot long heavy metal rod with
which you can dig up the soil specially when you want a very compact but deep
hole – useful when you want to make a live fence. A live fence?
What was that again? --- Oh that
is a fence made with branches of the very fast growing Glyricidia tree – 2 feet
long stout pieces of the branches are pushed into the holes made by the argol a
foot apart around the border of the farm.
The cuttings catch on and start growing and if you reinforce them with
some wire you have a good strong ‘live fence’ that keeps growing and also
provides mulch for the compost pit.
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| A Live fence |
And so we keep hearing and learning new words many of them
borrowed from kannada and used freely in the local Konkani language. And our maid speaks a bit of Hindi - just a bit, and sometimes my instructions
to her are met with a wide eyed confused look and I realise that she hasn’t
understood, or that I have used the wrong word. Like the other day I instructed
her to clean the “Mankirkee” well.
Blank look .... Oh not
Mankirkee but Marigee – for Mankirkee is a large cane basket (which doesn’t need any
cleaning ) and Marigee is the channel in
the cow shed into which the fodder is placed for the cows (which gets quite
messy and need regular cleaning). Not exactly similar sounding, but trying hard
to learn Kannada gets me confused sometimes.
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| The Marigee |
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| A Mankirkee |
And the script is another thing altogether. When I first started on it,
I got a set of picture story books – so
that I could read and correlate. I tried to get Revati our maid to listen and
correct my reading but she just couldn’t
stop giggling as I struggled to differentiate between all the squiggly
script! Now I have finally improved to a
point where I can read out stories like “The goose that laid golden eggs”, quite fluently.... but talking in
Kannada? Ah hem, well..... not yet!
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| My first Kannada Reader |
So I have created a filing system now and all the new
‘farm-words’ which we learn have been filed in it systematically. But sometimes my brain pushes this system
right behind my usual techno-jargon filing system and I am left fumbling for
words. But then at times it does reach out and flashes out the right word at
the right time. Like it happened the other day – a group of men with bundles of
wires and a lot of equipment, - probably workers from the KEB came asking for our farm-hand. Most people
know that we can’t converse in Kannada so prefer to talk to him. He had just left for
lunch so I signalled to them and said ‘Oota’ which means ‘lunch’. So they
turned to go away. One of them said to the other “Why don’t you ask her for the
Argol?” The others smirked as he mumbled back what sounded like “Are you
serious, she does not even know kannada ...how do you expect her to even know
what it is” But I had caught on to the word and I asked
them “Argol Beka?” - Do you want
Argol?. They turned around surprised and
I went into the tool shed and fetched it for them. The smirks were gone and did I detect a faint
tinge of respect for the fact that I could understand more kannada than they
thought I could?
Aww no – I just kid myself!
Aww no – I just kid myself!
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