Blog entry #8
Happy in the head | 'Haula dikhru kya mai tereko' | Hasan Minhaj | Haalu
Happy in the Head
Located in Bandra in Mumbai, this is a place where I’ve had one of the best haircutting experiences ever. Before the start of my third year in college, I had a rebellious determination to cut off all my hair, just because I couldn’t take it anymore. It took me a loooong time to convince Mom and when she finally agreed, I decided to go to this particular unisex salon. I had more confidence in their ability to do a good job of cutting my hair to a pixie cut, over any other women’s parlour, who usually specialise in styling longer hair. Ankieta did a great job, and true to its name, I was happy in the head for a really long time :)
'Haula dikhru kya mai tereko'
Welcome to Hyderabad! Here, the Hindi the locals speak is dubbed 'Hyderabadi Hindi'. I might familiarise you with a few more such words - wait for the upcoming posts. When you ask a question that may imply that you consider the other person as dumb, you won’t get a response. Instead, you get a counter question: Do I look like a fool? In Hindi, that would sound like: "Paagal lagta hu kya main tujhe?" In Hyderabadi Hindi, it's "Haula dikhru kya mai tereko?" It’s so colloquial, some part of it feels Bombay Hindi. Haula is the word for crazy. And dikhru is a shortened form of "dikh raha hu" (I look like). My Mumbai friend and I were aghast listening to this kind of Hindi at the start, but over time, we got used to it. I’m just glad we didn’t ourselves start speaking that dialect.
Hasan Minhaj
What has this hotshot got to do with Chennai? Directly, nothing. But once we moved into our house in Thoraipakkam after marriage, we would watch his show Patriot Act every night while having dinner. It was one of the few things that kept us sane in that house (more on that later, or probably not). We loved his show - very informative about myriad topics in the world, tragic truths exposed but disguised beneath his witty humour, the word plays, the fast-paced references made, most of which we were oblivious to due to not knowing certain inside jokes about the US, and the unique style of delivery and presentation via an LED wall and LED floor with diffusers. When you get a chance, do check it out! It’s a refreshing 45-minute break (sometimes it’s heavy stuff) you can take instead of binging on a re-run of a show you’ve already watched umpteen times.
Haalu
I haven’t been around much in Bangalore, so most of my anecdotes will centre around either food places (very few that I’ve been to), words that evoke strong emotions, or more frequently, Kannada words. Haalu is the word for milk in Kannada, and it rhymes with the Telugu equivalent Paalu. Similarly, Handi is the word for pig in Kannada while it’s Pandi in Telugu. Just when I thought I started to observe a pattern, my set of comparisons ended there. No other word in Telugu starting with P has a rhyming counterpart in Kannada starting with H, like Perugu (curd), Pilla (girl), Pilli (cat), Pelli (marriage). If you find any such rhyming words between P and H, do let me know!
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