Dial B for Violence

Everybody has friggin accents. Even the goras have accents, even though they'll be shocked if someone suggests that to them. But in a world of such variegated accents, some are funnier than others. The Mallu English accent, because of its obvious laughter inducing effect, has to be one of the most done-to-death accents in the world (probably one rung below Italian English). Which other accent has whole TV and radio shows dedicated to it? In office, I begin every day by clearing my inbox of mails which make fun of the way we pronounce 'auto' and 'office' sent to me by north Indian friends who think they are the first ones to discover the peculiar traits of Mallu English. I have seen all the Mallu accent-mocking mails that there is to be seen and honestly, they are not funny anymore. It's time they started sending me something different - like funny Bong English accent mails.

In my opinion, the Bong English accent has a lot of potential which people have not exploited fully. This was revealed to me a few days back when Kunz (yes, this is another one of the Kunz posts!) was very animatedly explaining to me the reasons for Kolkata Kinght Rider's disgraceful loss to Mumbai Indians.

Me: The KKRs are a bunch of losers, dude! Look how Mumbai Indians beat the shit out of them. Dada should go drown himself in the Hooghly.

Kunz: Nahin yaad! They lost because the peach was bad when Dada was batting.

It took me a few seconds to figure out that he was not blaming the quality of peaches and plums for the failure, but the quality of the pitch.

Kunz, unfortunately (or fortunately?), has a habit of shortening the 'ee' sound when it should be long and lengthening it when it should be short. The only times he says it correctly is when he says 'Eeesh!" (which is a popular Bong exclamation) and "Pheesh!" (which is a popular Bong food). On second thoughts, his pheesh would sound better if he shortened it to fish.

Once, Med had come home after roaming around Chennai seeing the sights and generally doing the experiencing-the-city thing.

Kunz: Where did you go, bitch?

Guys calling each other bitch may be fashionable in some circles, but neither Med nor Kunz belonged to such circles. Before anything unpleasant happened, I explained to Med that what Kunz meant to ask him was, "Where did you go? Beach?"

There are many such instances, one of which was at the end of a tiring day at work when Kunz declared that he was feeling like 'slipping'. By now you know the rules of Kunz's English and shouldn't have difficulty figuring out what he actually meant.

The lengthening and shortening of 'ee' is quite easy to figure out once you have heard Kunz speak for some days. But sometimes enigmatic gems emanate from him which takes a lot of effort in deciphering - like the one time he came to me very frustrated and declared that he badly needed to improve his 'bhaarbhal' ability. After about half an hour of tough mental gymnastics (sifting through words like 'barber' and 'bar-bell' to fit into the sentence), I too came to the conclusion that he badly needed to improve his 'verbal' ability.

But the one that takes the cake is this one:

One day I was sitting at my table, trying to post something on my blog, when Kunz came up to me.

Kunz: Hey, what is your hard dick's size?

I was shell-shocked and didn't know what to reply. Getting no reaction from me, he repeated the dreaded sentence, this time pointing to my laptop (and thankfully not to my lap). He was talking about my hard disk!

I've noticed that people from the North-East in general and some Bongs cannot pronounce the word 'disk' properly. Reminds me of the many times Tomba used to come to my room in college asking me whether he could 'have my hard dicks' when all he actually wanted to do was borrow my hard disk so that he could copy some movies. I have, since then, done the 'disk test' on many Bongs and North-East guys and most of them have failed, with hilarious consequences.

PS: Kunz has steadfastly refused to read my posts about him, maintaining that it's for my own safety - he says I won't be able to handle the 'bhaiyolance' that he'll unleash upon me. But I have a feeling he's been sneaking in to read when nobody's looking. So Kunz, if you're reading this, I'll continue to bombard you with the links until one day you read it in front of me.

[Other Kunz posts are here and here.]