This blog is a followup to my earlier blog -
Breaking the Leg of English Language
I have a colleague Venkat (name changed!) who is currently on an onsite assignment in UK. He really speaks very colourful English frequently sending us and our British clients in a tizzy. Here are some samples -
Recently our client partner Tony had organized a visit to the top floor of the famous 'Walkie Talkie' building in London. The views of London from there were stunning and we all took photos. After taking many group photos, Mr Venkat stumped all us by announcing - 'I want a photo of myself in which there is no audience' (he meant - only he is in the snap !!).
One day I went with him to the cafeteria. He told me - 'I really like the baju-ti here'. I racked my brains but could not decipher that. I thought maybe this is something exotic which I have never seen before. I asked him to spell it. He said 'b-a-g-u-e-t-t-e' !!
On another day he wrote a mail to a large number of recipients - 'I have some connectivity issues with my laptop today. I am working with helpdesk to resolve it. Please bare with me'.
Now, I thought I must intervene here. I took him aside and told him 'Venkat, the mail you wrote......I am sure you understand that when you write 'bare' instead of 'bear' it is a whole different meaning'. He realised his mistake but retorted with a straight face - 'Alam, I think we will be OK, because there were no females in the To or CC list in the mail!!'.
On another occasion Tony was explaining to us that he wanted our team to be very strict in the audits our team does for various project, even though sometimes Michael (Tony's boss) urges him to be more lenient. In this conversation, Mr Venkat added his nugget of wisdom, 'Tony, I think you are not as graceful as Michael'.
Both Tony & myself were taken aback only to realise that he actually meant 'Tony, you are not as forgiving as Micheal'!
You can see, we have become so good at deciphering what he actually means !!
Once he told me, 'Alam, you know I have been with this same company for 10 years. Working with the same people and on the same technologies makes you so drowsy !! I now want to work in some नीचे areas (Hindi captures how he pronounced it)'......
.........you guessed it he meant 'niche areas' -:)
Another one......once he had brought some some sweets for me from India.....I love sweets so I gobbled 3 or 4 Kaju Qatlis......and asked him 'Venkat, you have some too, yaar'. To this he replied with a sad face , 'Alam, I have so many holes'.........I said 'Whhaaat?'......he pointed to his teeth......(cavities, you got it !!) -:)
The last one has nothing to do with my friend Venkat.
This was a presentation to the client of a tool developed by my company, Infosys. Some very senior guy was making the power point presentation. I was also in the call. Summing up, the presenter said - 'This tool has jhoom-in jhoom-out facility also'. (zoom-in zoom-out)
Ye sun kar hum sab jhoom uthe.....jhoom barabar jhoom sharabi......
