Help & the helpless

humour

Language is a wonderful invention. It’s necessary, unavoidable, colourful and fascinating, but it can be excruciating if you don’t know the tongue. Notice I did not say funny. Right? Wrong! I personally have had many hilarious run-ins with languages, which have made wonderful party conversation-starters.

In my first month in Bengaluru, I realised my office was strangely fully Tamil-speaking. And, I only had a working knowledge of Telugu, let alone Kannada or Tamil. But my colleagues were quite forthcoming and friendly in making a newcomer feel at home.

It was precisely that sentiment I took advantage of a week later when I hired a maid to work at my bachelor pad. She agreed to my terms, but she had a condition, or rather, a handicap: she only spoke Tamil.

I wasn’t sure how it would work with a maid speaking in Tamil and me looking on dumbfounded, and still trying to get work done.

Colleagues to the rescue! I got a senior colleague, Rajpaul, to coach me on some key phrases. I managed well for a few weeks with “wash clothes”, “mop floor” and so on.

I was, in a way, emboldened and happy with my progress in learning a new language. One day, I bought a nice handmade laundry basket. So the place for storing clothes was changed. I had to ask the maid to do a new thing: “Take these clothes”.

Rajpaul came to the rescue with the new phrase. It was complicated — as most phrases are in Tamil for a first-timer. I wound up work soon and walked home as I chanted the phrase like a mantra. Something on the way must have distracted me — perhaps a moving auto that blared music. Promptly my mind lost the rhythm of the mantra. The syllables must have flipped. I nevertheless continued chanting the mantra, without realising that I was staring at a lexical calamity.

Cut to morning. I told the maid my garbled mantra. She looked at me wide-eyed, broke into a giggle, dropped the saucepan to the floor and ran away.

Bemused, I came to work and accosted Rajpaul. I repeated the incident. My agitated tone gathered around a few more colleagues. It was getting more public than I had expected. Rajpaul, like a school teacher, asked me, “Do you remember exactly what you told her?”

I racked my head and remembered the words pretty much accurately. When I was done telling Rajpaul, he burst out laughing. “What did I say?” I blurted. Rajpaul settled down and told me: “You told her to take off her clothes!”

The gathered junta joined the merriment and loud laughter. “All that is alright, Raj, mistakes are allowed. But the point is... did she do it?” More and louder laughter rang out. For days after that, I was the butt of office jokes. Jokes like, “Hey buddy, how’s the hot maid?”

I couldn’t run away from them. I just smiled, shook my head and kept my head buried in work.

Now, if anyone just as much as mentions “Tamil” or “maid”, I go for their throats.