Do you see what I see?

There are few things in life which go unnoticed by a lot of people, probably because they are so frequent in their occurence or probably because of their close resemblance to the things we do. In the end, we tend not to notice these dissimilarities. But again, there are people, people like me, who catch these moments and occurrences and try to bring out a new way of looking at things. Starting from today, there will be a series of articles on the same.

didn't get what i'm talkin' about? I'll tell you.

Let me start with one of my favourite states and its people. Maharashtra. but before that, a small bit of information about marathis. Marathis are very patriotic, just like the Sardars. Theatre was the major industry till the last decade or two. It, still is one of the major ones, and Mumbai being the base for the Indian film industry, Bollywood confirms the same. Ok, now back to my point. Try this, next time you meet any Marathi, ask him/her to speak in 'marathi language' and observe his/her nose flaring in anger, eventhough what he/she might be saying is something very sweet! it's very funny. the first few times when i saw these people talk in front of me (my first trip to bombay in 1993, it is still very vivid), i just couldn't stop wondering why they were angry all the time. Infact, i even went on to ask my dad to take me back home quickly as these people would kill us someday soon looking at their anger.! :) but, as i started meeting them more frequently (during a phase later in my life), i learnt a lot about their culture, their life, and now, i've kinda started liking them.

Next in my list, come, probably the coolest group of Indians, the Malayalis, or the Keralites, or rather as we all commonly know them, the Mallus. There were a few jokes on mallus which did the rounds when we were kids in school. One of them goes like this: If you find a language which you can read, write and speak, then it's Kannada (Just assume that you know Kannada for the time being, okay? you see, i was born and brought up in Karnataka where such jokes made a lot sense). And If you can read the script partially but do not understand the language, then it's Telugu. If you can understand the language a bit, but cannot read the script, then it's Tamil. But, if you cannot read, write or understand the language, then it's definitely MALAYALAM!

Language Check: Pronunciation - Malayalam, just make sure you roll your tongue over the second 'L' and bamm! let it go with a click.

Anyway, my point is rolling of tongues is a major, major part of the Malayalam Language. Now, here's a question your way.

How to roll a tongue?

   I, instead of describing it here, i would let you observe a Mallu yourself when he/she speaks. You can count atleast 10 rolls in a sentence. It'll be the most common shape his/her mouth will take in a sentence. An interesting generalisation that people generally make is that Tamil is very closely similar to Malayalam. Yes, it is. The only addition is the Nasal Talk in Tamil.

Question of the Day: How will a Malayali spell 'MOON'?

yam - vo - yet yanodher vo - yund (read: and) yun.!

Alrite then guys, I think i'll have to cut short my article here. It's 4 in the morning and it is time for me to sleep. Also, it is time for me to get over the frustrating draw by my favourite football club, Liverpool FC over Olympique Lyon. I'll be back with the second edition in a couple of days. Till then, tata.