Miss Call

Mobile phones are a necessity for everyone nowadays. My maids, milkman, Dhobi, every street vendor selling peanuts or vegetable feel so empowered to own a mobile phone today. For a long time I resisted getting a mobile myself until my kids prevailed on me hoping I would lend it to them to show off to their friends. That was 15 years back!  I cherish my childhood where there were no mobile phones and having a landline was also a great luxury. Our parents had no way to track us when we went out to play or sneaked out to the nearby roadside seller to buy the forbidden street foods!!  Today the mobile may seem like a formidable enemy for our children! Keeping track has never been so easy, though my son would say there are kids who find loopholes in this disadvantage to

Miss Call! This is so typical of India! I guess we all are so familiar with this most irritating phrase, which really makes me laugh or cry sometimes. I met my kabariwallah (junk buyer) the other day and wanted him to pay a visit to my house to pick up the junk I wanted to get rid off before Diwali, making way for Lakshmi to enter. He grinned and said, “miss call maar dena”. I am sure you would agree with me, which our American or British friends would have really wondered what he was talking about! I mean American-American and British- British, not Indian born Americans or British. My kabariwallah was trying to do his customer a great favour, which means I do not need to call him but just buzz him so that he would call me back and spend the money on the call. A collect call in a way! Customer is king and long live missed calls!

There are more dimensions to this that I suddenly discovered. Some bosses, bureaucrats, and many VIPs do want to feel that way by giving you a missed call and then wait for you to call. It is very intriguing to put any logic to this. Is this a cultural thing or only particular to us Indians?

I love my India!

 Don't miss the Khara Chicken on the extreme left of the board (it is literally standing!), on our way to Dehradun from Delhi

These are dancers at a fair, it takes them hours to have the bodies painted! This dance marks the harvest festival of Onam

 

Busy painters!!

What is in a name?

When a child is born, it is the most important moment in every parent’s life. Sometimes, in excitement parents sometimes go overboard and give very strange, weird and funny names to their children and they have to live with it for the rest of their lives!

There is a shop in our small town and it has this name: Jharu Mal Kura Chand & sons. For those who may not know the meaning of these names, Jharu is a broom and Kura is garbage, while Mal and Chand are just suffixes to these names. Having lived in a home with gardens, my family often hired gardeners to tend to the heavy work around the garden. I saw that many, or almost all of these gardeners had very strange names –for instance one was called Mata Badal (change your mom, yes I am serious, that’s what it means!), Baskari- this is an interesting one-it seems that this man’s mom had a baby almost each year, totaling to over a dozen, so her mother- in- law said, “it’s enough!” – meaning Bas Kari, so that was the name of this poor man. Another name is Peration, it is so bizarre that this name came about because she was born out of a cesarean section, so operation became Peration! In villages child mortality was very high so names given were such that no one cast an evil eyes on them so names like Chor – thief, Bhootra-ghostly, came about.

Then there are names very popular in the northern part of India, Lucky, Lovely, Prince. Believe me, they are all real people – Lucky is our very favourite driver who takes us around and has an burning desire to learn English and go to Canada (pronounced as Ken ae da). Lovely is another taxi stand owner where Lucky works, and Prince is another strapping young man who is the son of our car Mechanic – Kitty, (yes, a funny name too!). He has major aspirations to go to
Ken ae da. There are more such unbelievable names like – Dolly, Sweety, Baby, Baba, Pinky and so many more.

Now there are a few friends who really want to embarrass their kids with names like Ripon- after the Governor General and Viceroy of India – and this is the young girl’s name! Another friend has named his daughter - India, we all have realized that he is a great patriot but to name a child with the name of your country is taking it too far!!  One more name – Generail Singh, parents who wanted their son to become a General in the army!

There are very funny dog names as well. I think it does deserve another post. So look out for these strange names and mail some really unlikely ones soon.