A deviation

I am now going to deviate a little. The last few posts took us chronologically from class 3 to 4 to 5 to 6. Lest things become monotonous, and start feeling as if Wadi was just Saint Ambrose Convent, I will deviate and insert several posts regarding some other aspects of life in Wadi. Wadi as I had said, had four distinct geographical divisions. The Railway Colony, the ACC colony and the Bajaar and the Tanda. The first two areas were house to outsiders, bajaar was house to the indigenous people, and Tanda to the Lambadas. People in this part of Karnataka had a totally different way of speaking Kannada, which the south Karnataka Kannadigas did not even understand. The names here were also totally different from those in South Karnataka. Follow this link for some North Karnataka surnames http://www.ourkarnataka.com/states/nk_familynames.htm. The form of Kannada used here was rough and earthy. It was liberally sprinkled with slang. On buses and trains, it was not uncommon, even for women, to ask people sitting on seats to “move their ass a bit” so that they can accommodate themselves. “Solpa kundi sarsiriyappa. Naavu ondsolpa kundi hachhthivi” was what they said. Like the Jats of Haryana, the northerners are a volatile lot. Most conversation starts with references to the others sister or mother. While visiting people, we would expect to be welcomed with warm words like “Barri nimmavun. Eshtu divasagyada bandu”, and we would reply “Yakri nimmayi? Monne bandinalla? Soole makkalu helilla nimage?” Such usages are so delicate that translating them into English renders them impotent. So I am not even trying. If those of you who read this blog and do not understand these sentences, find authentic north Karnataka people to enlighten you. Such way of talking, made the language more comfortable, unlike the chaste Kannada spoken by the Achars and the Murthys of South Karnataka. These days everyone in India believes that Karnataka is a land of Pubs and discos and software engineers who “live together”, a silicon valley clone of sorts. That’s not the case. It may be true of Bangalore, but Northern Karnataka is a real, earthy, wonderful Indian place even today where real Indians live and die. Thank God, there is nothing Silicon Valleyish about it.

The population was a mixture of Marathis like Kulkarnis and Deshpandes, some Telugus, Muslims, Marwaris, Lingayats, Waddars, Lambadas, scheduled castes and tribes, and other expatriates like us. We knew no difference between each other. Since many did not speak the earthy version of Kannada, we spoke a curious sort of Hindi. It was hardly the Sanskrtised BJP Hindi nor was it the Hindustani variety so favoured by the likes of Khushwant Singh and Kuldeep Nayyar. It wasn’t even the “Bhai ko ek dum ich tapkaneka” variety of Mumbaiyya. It wasn’t the Hyderabadi or the Bangalore variety. I can only call it the Hindi of Gulbarga. It consisted of simple phrases like “Kya be?”, “Kaiku aara?”, “Terku Kaiku” “Merku Hona” etc. For us, the people of Wadi, people who wore lungis and traveled northwards by 10 UP Madras Bombay Mail were Madrasis and those who wore Pyjamas and traveled South by 9 DN Bombay Madras Mail were Seths. We were supreme and were located on the middle of the Earth, where 10 UP crosses 9 DN.