Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Language Blues...

After Holi's masti & ho -halla it was time to take the break. No not for me frens but for my voice. For few days it completely backed out. Anyway back to the business of blogging & today I will tell u a small funny incident at my workplace!
And its related with the funny side of the language.
Ranchi has a sizable Bengali population and so has our office.
It so happened that a technical discussion was going on between two gentleman one being Bengali (say Mr B) and other South Indian (say Mr S). The language of discussion was offcourse English.
Somehow Mr B was not able to convince Mr S and the discussion ended in stalemate.
Mr B went back to his table thinking how on earth I am not able to covince him. A peculier thing abt him was that whenever he is agitated he uses Hindi to stress his point .
Now in the vocabulary of Mr B there was a word जानना (i.e to know ) but he further improvised it and went to discuss again the matter with Mr S. Mr S told him why he is explaining the same thing again and again.
Mr B in his agitated voice told him मैं आपका जनाना चाहता हूँ !:)
What he actually meant that he want to make him understand
But in english it translated like I want your wife as जनाना means wife !
There was a tremendous laughter in the whole section. :)
Sabne hanste huye kaha Sir aap yahan aisa bole koi baat nahin par kabhi kisi rikshewale ya sabziwale ko samjhate samjhate ye mat keh deejiyega nahin to badi mushkil ho jayegi.
(Sir its OK that u have spoken like this in the office & that too with a south indian but if u tell the same thing while trying to convince a vegetable vendor or rikshawallah it will land u in great trouble)
Anyway Mr B still cherishes his Hindi and is not afraid to use it now and then. Meanwhile we r eagerly awaiting another funny twist which is bound to come sooner or later.

Saturday, March 18, 2006

Holi

Holi is not my favourite festival. Somehow my energy level never increases in same proportion as it does as Deepawali starts approching. The reason being my childhood memories associated with Holi are not so pleasant. I have lost count of years I have evaded geeli holi . But no body can deny that if played in right spirits it is the most powerful festival to bring love, joy,harmony & togetherness in every strata and crosssection of the society.
In our part of world the Holi Day is divided in two parts. In the first half people play with colors. Please note that the use of word color should not be taken literally:). It includes wide amt of material starting with dye,potein,cow dung,mud….and the rest I leave to ur imagination. From my childhood I used to evade this first half. In all those years my holi started from second half in which people visit each other place and smear the faces with abeer or gulaal.
But this year I was mentally prepared not to use any tricks to get away from the colours . So when first group came to my home I readily opened the door …
& then what happened
see the results for urself:)

This pic was taken just before I was going outside to play colors. And the next one was taken when I came back.
























This one is pic of my friend & he is in real life fairest among all our officemates:)
Colors used : Green color+Black Dye :)


Saturday, March 11, 2006

Ban on Blogspot in Pakistan

For last week my frens in Pak were not able to access their blogs. Only today I came to know that it was not due to any technical server snag but due to official ban imposed by Govt of Pakistan on entire blogs hosted by blogspot.
Reason : some blogs on blogspot carried the controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Read the related news story here.

I see no problem in banning those specific blogs that hurt religious sentiments but to impose a blanket ban on all blogs is too harsh censorship which will mostly affect innocent Pak bloggers.

I would like to request bloggers every where to please visit BBC Urdu’s forum online to protest against this ban. I hope the Pak govt will see the voice of reason and revoke its decision asap.