Monday, June 8, 2009

God's own Coundree!


Chances are that when you meet me for the first time,you would assume that I'm a north indian least of all a keralite.Coming from kerala does not mean I have to have the heavy malayalee accent that people uniquely associate us with.During my first year of college,a couple of my malayalee friends mistook me for a north indian and started conversing in hindi as best as they could.I cleared all their doubts with my version of weirdly accented malayalam which i have since then been uniquely associated with.The trouble is,I'm in no man's land.My hindi isn't perfect enough and my malayalam is an abomination.
Moving ahead,a good friend of mine gets a kick out of watching Lolakutty in Mtv decided to pick on me(i fondly refer to her as a mallu basher)by giving me a list of words and asking me to read it out loud for her.All these words were carefully chosen(i bet after weeks of research) so as to bring out my hidden malayalee accent which she firmly believed was in my blood.I'll list some of the words for you-
  1. Cauliflower
  2. Goal
  3. Knowledge
  4. College
  5. Jumped
  6. Loving
  7. MBA (apparently she was expecting me to read it out as Yem Bee Yay)
  8. Going
  9. Boeing
  10. Coming
Well,she was right.I did have an hidden malayalee accent afterall,somewhere deep inside me.In the process of reading out these words,i faltered.I never heard the end of it ever.I still get calls fom her,late in the night asking me to say 'Ford' out loud or making me hear the endless malayalee jokes that she came across.It doesn't quite annoy me,after all I am a malayalee and chances are that we are there at every nook and corner of the world.

10 comments:

Rashmi said...

Haha :) hey common ai too haiv malyaleee frands common i dont yeemake fun of deethem :)

Rashmi said...

All in good faith buddy, dont take anything in a bad way. I respect everyone genuinely.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Buddy !!! I know its bad to be associated with your mother tongue but I have a few Mallu friends and they speak English in a typical way you mentioned....and I don't blame them ...

Chicky said...

Oh! And I speak Hindi with a Bihari accent! Even though I spent most of my life in Kanpur! Even my Dad doesn't have that strong a Bihari accent, and he has spent more years in Bihar than me!

Chicky said...

Why isn't there a follower widget here? You are not on Wordpress, so u can easily add it na?

Bhargav said...

I have lots of friends and collegues who are malayalees and yeah i too have given them a list of words every now and then.. :) i remembered those days !

Incognito said...

@ Kaddu: Accents are something that we have no control over.My malayalam has an english accent to it,while my english has an occasional malayalam tinge to it.As for my hindi,it's an abomination!

Incognito said...

@ Bhargav: Lol..We take it in good spirit buddy.I mean,that's what made Lola so popular in Mtv.Without her accent,she woud have been just another TV personality! ;)

Madhumitha said...

i was imagining you saying it all, ash! =D
i'm gonna make you say all this the next time we meet! i SO wanna hear it from you! =D >=D<