Working Woman's Wonders- Part Two

There’s an anomaly peculiar to our country regarding the use of language. English is the language of official use in the Central Government and one finds that most officials can write English but not speak it well. The reverse is true for Hindi. Majority of those working in North India speak Hindi; it’s their mother tongue. But they can’t really write it well. The lack of fluency in spoken English does not, however, hold them back and they use it with a laissez-faire attitude that can be hilarious at times.

Take, for instance, the strangely Indian quirk of referring to anything behind them as ‘at my backside’. During my early years in service when I was posted in Bangalore and given the charge of administration of a large office, I’d launched a cleanliness drive. A few hours into it, a junior official came into my chamber with a look of consternation on his face.

“You have to intervene, Madam,” he said.

“Yes? What’s the problem?”

“Well, I am cooperating with this drive but administration section is putting files at my backside and bad smell is coming.”

On any given day in my present posting I receive about forty to fifty files. I have to go through them diligently. Now and then I come across bloopers that send me into fits of laughter.

Consider this: ‘Why this proposal is coming peace meal?’ (a junior official to the one who put up the file)

‘...hence the two lowest bidders are fit for evolution’ (evaluation!)

‘...kindly tell me if this still holds goods.’ (complainant in a pension case)

They’re many, many more, which I shall duly note and pass on.

But the incident that takes the cake so far occurred during a meeting I attended during my previous posting in Delhi. It was a high level meeting with a Member of the Board, Mr. Mohanty (we shall call him), who was from the eastern part of the country and, thus, had a distinct accent. There were many of us Directors in the room and Mr. Mohanty was bemoaning the slow progress of a particular project.

“You fellows* jaast don’t adhere to time lines,” he complained. “I keep telling and telling baat you don’t leesan. Whaat I shood do weeth you all, huh?”

*(everybody was ‘fellows’ for him. A new take on equality of the sexes, I guess).

We held our peace collectively.

“After all,” he continued, “you can take a daug...”

He paused. Dog? I wondered.

“You can take a dauk to tha water baat you can’t make eet drink.”

Dauk? Duck! A rumble of laughter went through the room. In what universe would one need to take a duck to the water?

“Horse! Horse!” I whispered. My colleagues giggled and tried to shush me.

Too late. Mr. Mohanty’s ears had caught my voice.

“Yes, Meeses Gupta, you have saamtheeng to share weeth aas?”

“Er, no, Sir. Nothing.”

He fixed me with a hoary glare. “Please, I eenseest.”

I cleared my throat and said: “I think it’s a horse, Sir.”

He looked at me as if I was mad.

“You theenk a dauk ees a horse?”

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And, as always, here are two videos related to language faux pas. Enjoy them!