The wonderful world of unmentionable local lingo

Ok, this one comes straight for my local friends-family, students and chance acquaintances please skip this for I fear the outlandish usage of vocabulary here might require parental guidance and even an ‘A’ certificate and may be also a rethinking of sketching out my character certificate for some.

Being from a small town of the interiors of the country a bowl full of colourful language is served magnanimously to you in a daily dose... and whether you choose to be a listener to it or not, it hardly qualifies...
After initial fits of shock you slowly get used to it as it merges into your own lingo so conspicuously...

Recently I was at this social gathering of friends, intoxicated with all the fun and idle gossiping that we were indulging in....when all of a sudden someone mentioned something inane and before I could really reflect on how I should respond, I blurted out ‘ghanta!’... And much to my surprise the room burst out in guffaws and I even noticed one of our sheepish male friends nudge another. ‘Ghanta’ for the layman-me till now was the local way of saying ‘ya sure’ with sarcasm thrown in a good measure. My jaw gradually dropped but sometimes (happens very less often though with me) things take time to register, so I must have mentioned it again during the course of the evening....till finally my dear beloved took me to a corner and explained it refers to the ...mmmm.... ‘Manhood’....the veritable middle finger...!

WHAT? n why didn’t you dear beloved think about mentioning this to me before coining it at every possible prospect in our conversations....sorry I said to him (hey not for what you think!)....sorry my dear, it suits the mouth too well now (no pun intended) to give up on it...So I continue to use it, of course more discreetly now. Anyways, that’s as far as I go...an occasional bloody, f##king or holy shit and ‘sala’ don’t really get included in this category, do they?

‘Sala’ by the way is a favourite with the public here....now how do I translate this into a word with an actual meaning is like a mammoth task I fail to be skilled in....but I hear it all the time.... ‘Bhak sala’, ‘abe sale’ 'oye sala' 'sala yeh' and 'sala woh' ....it prefigures in many forms....
The Hindi dictionary defines ‘sala’ as ‘a brother of the wife’ ...but then the Oxford dictionary’s meanings of some words are equally misleading...let’s just say it’s the Indian way of putting a ‘bloody’ in almost all situations...

Then of course.... (This feels like a refresher course in ‘What language not to use when trying to create an impression!’.... ) there is local terminology for a good-for-nothing kinda guy...this one is from my dear friend who loves this word so much I wonder if he’s heard it or uttered it more often....chichora...
Add to this is ‘shudai’...shudaiyon da pind (duffer’s family )... maghaiyya... howlett... ch##### and sometimes when things go beyond one’s power of expression, my friends here just suffice to say....laberi chand agarbatti....which is supposed to tantamount to an abuse but makes my sides burst at the bizarre way it’s mouthed.

Then of course are the bigger ones...MC and BC....these my dear are not...M C Hammer or the Bachelor of Commerce....
These are the ultimate in ridicule...!
And to our horror, recently there was a friend’s four years old son babbling these words in full form round the house because he had heard the bus driver call it to the bus conductor twice that day...and there, he thought of displaying how quick he was in his grasping and titled everyone thereby...so now there were MC grandpa, MC grandma and yes momma you are an MC too....he went around the house in these proclamations in his gala way....
Till... chatak (slam) came the chapet (slap) and the boy learnt his lesson for life....he called everyone MC thereafter when they weren’t around...!

Aye lo (take this)....ek kantap raseed kar do kya (should I give you a whack across)....bhaisahab and bhaiyaji (mr)....are some more....
Another dear friend of mine has a ready retort of an opinion of anything you ask about on this planet....how was the movie dude? ‘fuddu yaar’ ....oh sorry!... n the date....'fuddu' again...and beyond that I am afraid to ask what this word means but take it as an indecent elder brother of faltu (useless)...and another would call the same experience... ‘ekdum rapchik or jhakaas’ (completely out of this world).... ‘Solid hain’ if someone says...means it holds substance and ‘bhankaar’ means it’s as good as the garbage....

So there my friends...I think that was enlightening enough and I’ve ‘maar le’ enough of this side of the world....
That by the way means I’ve screwed up things full and final now for poor Kanpur, my dear hometown and myself...
This pot purée of Hindi-English has got me quite tumbling...
So use these freely guys and ‘duniya ke bajate raho’...n screw the world!