the vagaries of mallu vocabulary

Friday, December 10, 2004
sometimes i have the strangest urge to blurt out words that i know will get me stared at.
i grew up knowing that shorts could at any moment be called bermudas, knickers or half pants.
"eda monay, GO-n-put yuwer nhikkers onn."
(yo son, go put some shorts on)
of course, i didnt hear

that a lot, since i wasnt much of an exhibitionist.
half pants is heard in snatches of conversation, its slowly dying out... i miss the half pants. i want some half pants.
of course nowadays you'll probably hear..."these boys and girls, i dont know what to do with them. all with their baggy pants and tight shirts showing their underwears."

then there's brassiere... the less said the better. i know all those who've heard it will cringe in sympathy.

then there is the famous "fileman". for the longest time, whenever i walked around the house without a shirt on, my dad or mom would make a comment about looking like a fileman. i really did hear it as fileman. when i asked them what it meant, they said..."its like a bodybuilder ... dont show off your muscles... especially when you're all skin and bones" only now do i realize that over the years some mallu must have gone somewhere and heard the word "pehalwan" which seems to be a hindi word indicating wrestler/strongman. i suppose they walked around in thongs or the indian equivalent - loincloths. i dont want to talk about that anymore, lest i get a visual.

the latest word i've encountered is hippyism. uncovered this gem in the last 2 months. pronounced - hippiysm
the state of being a hippy.
a hippy was a bad person. he would grow his hair out long, smoke ganja and say "peace, man!"
more importantly, he was always disobedient to his parents. such a bad boy.
at various times, i have now been accused of hippyism. the clincher being, "who's a hippy nowadays... nobody, so why r u still doing this hippyism?"

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

lol !