Tamallishindi :)

Wondering what it is???

Well...Tamil + Malayalam + English + Hindi :)

Being a Tamil Iyer born and brought up in Kerala, i have the advantage of knowing Tamil & Malayalam very well....and the disadvantage of not knowing Hindi so well.

There are so many instances from which i have picked up various learning's regarding the usage of languages. But, this one was "just can't forget" sort of..

In one of my previous jobs, i worked as a customer service exec.

I take care of the walk-in customers - their queries,requests & complaints.

One fine day afternoon, a middle aged man with a thick specs and a thin beard walked in.He approached the counter and asked me "mujhe kuch doubts hein.Kis sae baath karna haein?"...(Being a Hindi handicapped person, i know this is what he asked, but i am not sure whether these are the words he used. So folks, grammatical mistakes are unavoidable (by me) & forgivable (by you))

So, the normally confident me is not so confident when it comes to Hindi. So, pretending to be confident, i said "Jee haan, aap mujsae pooch sakthae hein".( I stressed that hein part like my 7th std Hindi teacher)

There was a wide grin on his face, probably the reason being, i was intelligent enough to reply in Hindi and not in English.(or so i thought!)

So, he went on asking his doubts and i went on answering his doubts.

But,if u were an outsider, and watching this from the other side of the counter glass, u wud have felt that i am doing an action song( dancing & acting together) in front of this customer.

But, on this side of the glass, i was genuinely, seriously, horribly, terribly trying to convey my message in Hindi.

By the end of our conversation,I almost got exhausted by this uneventful attempt of mine.(my brain, my mind....)

Then, after clearing all the doubts, he handed over the cash to me. The poor me, handed over the cash to the cashier to enter it in the system. It so happened that the cashier was a Mallu. So i said.."Ligi, idhu enter cheythu kazhinjal, cash counter close cheyyam". (mathlap - Let's close the cash counter after this transaction)

Suddenly, i hear a beautiful,proper,rhythmic Malayalam!!! Any guess from whom??? From none other than our own Mr.Middle aged who made me write "ksha" in Hindi with my nose (mathlap- zimple - who gave me a tough time!)

Well, imagine my plight at the moment...I didn't know whether to be happy or sad or shocked or zombied!!!

But i had learnt my lesson - " Before replying in Hindi immediately ( and killing the language), check with the customer which are the languages he is comfortable with. The lady luck will always be with one language apart from Hindi!!!