April A-Z Challenge: A Tale of Four Cities [E]

Blog entry #5

Ekal | End of sem | Ekkaduthangal | Eshtu

Ekal
This was our favourite stationery shop to go to in Chembur, Mumbai. Although it was not like a store but more of an OTC shop; standing at the counter, you could see different kinds of diaries, sketch pens, Staedtler colour pencils, Cello gripper pens (my  favourite), stacks of A4 sheets, and more. The isle inside was like peeking into a dreamland, or like Hannah Montana’s closet within a closet (I can watch this video any number of times!) Okay I’m not a maniac, I just really really love stationery, like A LOT. No Staples store could even come close to the variety and pricing that this shop had. And since we would frequent this shop a lot more during school projects, for charts especially, we’d request the shopkeeper to give us discounts so we could buy more for less.

End of sem
This is the time that the compres (BITS name for the final comprehensive exams at the end of each semester) would be getting over, and it would be time for students to start packing their bags to go home! You see some folks excited to go home, others not so much, since they’ve made a lot of friends and are reluctant to part with them even for a few weeks. In my first semester, I didn’t feel like coming home at all! I had discovered a new side of myself, and wanted to explore being an extrovert. But at the end of the first year, I was looking forward to coming home because I signed up for an internship where I’d be doing Android app development. Towards the end of the third year, it didn’t matter if I stayed or went home, both seemed equal. Fourth year was busy with placements and internships anyway, so time flew really fast. And I’d had my fair share of fun in the campus and was ready to move on to bigger things…

Ekkaduthangal
Pronounced "Ee-kaa-du-thaang-uhl", I used to confuse this place with the similar-sounding Eachangadu ("ee-chaan-gaa-du"). Once I moved to West Mambalam from Perungudi, the so-called "outskirts", I would cross this metro station frequently, since it’s on the green line, in between Ashok Nagar, close to where we stay, and St. Thomas Mount, close to where my aunt stays. To remember words, I usually try to form associations, or break them up into parts that make sense to me. For this place, I made up a joke: "If you’re unable to visit someone in person to give them an invitation, they’ll instead ask that you send them an e-Card, or in Tamil: Ekkaduthangal (e-cardu thaangal), which means give me an e-Card" :P 

Eshtu
Being a polyglot, I enjoy learning languages. Since I know Tamil and Telugu already, I find Kannada to be somewhere in between the two. I’m discerning patterns, and trying to make connections so it helps me remember words. The first set of words I usually learn in a language are 5WH (Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How), so I made a table to compare:

So the last one not included in the set of questions I learned was How Much:
That’s where Eshtu comes in – ‘How Much’ in Kannada
(Entha in Telugu, Evalo in Tamil)

Since this covers 3 of the 4 South Indian languages (yes North India, we have 4 different South Indian states, each considerably different from the other), I hope to add basic Malayalam phrases into my list soon!

P.S. While writing 'E', I am reminded of Ross’s little speech from Friends on Love - "Ah Love; L-O-V-E Love". Here’s a clip to enjoy how he squeaks out the 'E' in the end.

Image courtesy: Google ©