Hum Bhaat Khata!!!!

Our national language is one which is not spoken with ease in most parts of our vast country baring the hindi speaking belt..Its an irony that its significance as a national language is marginalised in most parts specially the south.Elsewhere it has been adapted in a unique fashion often getting blended with the local dilect in the process making it amazingly hilarious..

The bongs for example have their own way of conversing in hindi whereby the gender of a person gets invariably misinterpreted (using "thi" in place of "tha" etc..)..My hometown Shillong is packed away in the far most corner of north east India.Sometimes in our growing up days we often felt secluded from the civilized and modern world.Just an example to highlight this would be getting any national daily a day later than the actual print date..Although it had a cosmopolitan diospora of citizens the national language was quite beautifully customized to suit the khasi speaking tribe. "Aap kutta hum khaya" meant the dog having bitten the person and not other wise...And the innocent souls never understood what they actually were saying but tried their best to be at par with others who were slightly better in comparison to them while speaking in hindi.

I remember the Kong Rani (kong being sister in khasi)who's hindi was nothing less than a postmortem of the language. (Munshi Prem Chnad would have died a thousand deaths more hearing her or her fraternity speak hindi).She had opend up a provision store in our locality....The store was well stocked up and had everything that you may require in day to day life...Right from maggi to nails and hammer it was all available with her.She later even diversified a bit by stocking up cement and selling it to local building contractors..Inspite of such a variety of goodies being available in her shop we (a bunch of young lads) were frequent vistor to her shop (not to catch a glipmse of her)but to get our cricket balls as it didnot require going too far to get them sometimes even in between games.

It was not always a pleasant experience buying things from her shop partly because of her attitude.At one point of time I was forced to think that the shop was a mere way for her to pass her time looking at the street that went past her shop.I dont blame her totally for this as most of the businessmen in the east and north east are more particular about the timings of their lunch and afternoon siesta than maximising profits.She was rude at times but in her worst self if you by chance happened to visit her while she was having her lunch(cold rice cakes and few pieces of fried meat)...I relate this with her hindi speaking ability because at this very precise moments you could find her hurling a few abuses for stepping into her shop.I casually went to get a ball not knowing she was taking an early lunch that day.What greeted me was both shocking and hilarious, shocking because you will never find a shopkeeper shooing away a customer like this anywhwre else and hilarious because of what she uttered in hindi. What she said goes like this- " hum bhaat khata".Now this will need some bit of expalnation and translation into actual hindi. Bhaat is basically rice as its called in that part of the country.So what she actually meant was "go and let me have my rice in peace" where as most of it remained in her heart only because she must not have known how to say the rest of the words (go and peace and placing everything together to form a sentence thereby).

I bet if you can find such characters anywhere else but in the tiny city of Shillong. Each street, each person, each corner has a tale to tell and I will try my best to bring them out in front of the readers as and when they hit my memory and makes me nostalgic.... Till then happy reading!!