Sunset at Khajuraho

Known for its erotic sculptures, I was advised by my helpful "Bharat Ghoomo" guide book to visit the western temples in the evening ... the sunset , they claim, ( not proven though ) is spectaculor ( minus the exaggeration ) .


But something thats truley spectacular is undoubtedly the intricate temple carvings. They are at the same time explicit, erotic and sensual ... ( see it for yourselves .. you will believe it ) often beckoning a few woows and ooughs from the foreign tourists who are bewildered by the carvings .

I missed the sunset at the western temples .. I had to rush back to Delhi ! When I returned back to Delhi, one of my friends wondered loudly .. "Would they have actually posed for the sculptors ? "

Never have South Indian from North India

During one of the legs of my 'epic' north Indian journey (in Agra .. I believe ), I had South Indian food from a North Indian restaurant. Mistake !! ( twice over ) ...
Some hotels have made their billing system so good and computerized that it gets you a faster bill... loosing money faster ! The billing is done on old one line dot-matrix priters with 2-3 inch printer papers and minimal software . So essentially the items on the menu ( owing to its big indian names ) are abbreviated ... My bill said

"Ms Dos : Rs.20/-"

( think MS-DOS .. think Masala Dosa )
Sometimes the billing system is better left not computerised !

Borrowings from other language

I generally try to avoid slangs , Hinglish, Tamilsh, Manglish or for that matter any peak words that I generally bombard myself with when Iam in a group of cross-cultural, cross-tongued and cross-minded people !

Here are a few usages that I dont like .. and me try not to soak into my talking .

1. C'mon da , No da , bring it da etc etc !- owes its origin on south indian languages having da as a prime mode of calling anyone .. unless used as a short for Darling or Da Vinci ! ( btw da in french is 'of' )
eg: Its very easy da ! ( seen mostly in parts of Mangalore , Chennai ) ( dont know other places ..but i have heard these here )

2. Its easy no ? I told you no ? - I think no was initially meant for using as 'know' .. atleast it sounds like !

3. Actually / Basically / Generally ( and all the -ally brothers ) -
eg : Actually/ Basically Iam from Kerala.

4. Or what -
eg : Is this finished or what ? , Is he missing or what ?


5. Nothing but - You can use this to start defining something .. and dont know how to start it .. very useful when asked in interviews ( to answer direct what is - questions )
eg : A semi-conductor is nothing but ....

6. Man-
Irritating usages : Iam late man , See you man. Thanks man .
Legal usages : free man, super man , post man, dead man..
Though its perfectly legal (read un-irritating ) to add Man in the begining ..
eg : Man .. Iam late .. but hey here is the catch .. if you are using Man in the begining , better not use any other man anywhere else in the sentence ..
(Imaging having to talk something like ..
"Man .. Peter Parker is Spiderman , Man "
.. Its like adding baby when talking to cute girls .. "You are a groovy-baby .. baby " ( from Austin Powers )

From that authoritative and unofficial grammer talk on how and how not to use language ... lets get on to my next "favorite irritation" (intended malapropism ) .. slangs

There are a gozillion other usages and slangs that I hear and try not to emulate them in my vocabulary ... a few are here :

Lets start with tamil .. ( I was in Chennai for almost 3 years and a lot of tamil speaking friends use these ) There is a whole lot of other usage thats called Madras bhashai .. thats different .. thats the evolution process .. we are the melting ( read mixing ) pot ... the vocal urns of linguistic evolution.

1. sema - ( stands for 'very' : pronounced 'se' as in semaphore , 'ma' as in ma.)
2. machi - ( friend ) ( guide to pronunciation : ma as in mama, chi as in tai-chi )

eg : ithu sema tough machi , sema hot machi ( from Radio Mirchi, Chennai ad-line )

... more to follow .. iam irritated enough today ( how silly ! one slang can blow off the cap of my patience ) ! This is sema irritating machi ...right no ?