Wah Wah Mah Mah

India - a great country.

When we talk about this great country, we talk about its great culture. We have every reason to cite examples about its diversities and yes unity. Of the infinite dimensions I have chosen an interesting topic that was ringing bells (Oh sorry! gongs) in my head for so long.

The ultra modern English speaking crowd, the generation X++, hyper energetic set of young brigade. Every year these days, I feel, is like a generation. A person, a year younger to you is a person a generation ahead. Confusing!!???Really is!!!

Of the two genders, the females I believe are more vulnerable and susceptible not only to social threats but to the changing trends and lifestyles, food, fashion and languages.

I belonged to the era of Yahoo messenger and chat rooms (nostalgic).Then generation changed in a year or two. Social networking sites came. And eventually came the era of Orkut, Facebook and Myspace. Oh gosh! I believe I am left behind.

I was going through the profile of this girl in one such site. Everywhere she had used a word ‘mah’ to describe something in her profile. I was quite taken aback. ‘Mah’… ‘Mah’ … ‘Mah’… was echoing through my brain [akin to Aunty (Pause), Aunty (Pause), Aunty from an Indian hair dye Ad)]. My small brain and relatively old brain (generation X--) pondered and travelled all the distances to infinity to find the deep secret behind this ‘mah’.

She was actually from Maharashtra. So, at first, I thought the love for the state influences her a lot. And hence that perpetual feeling brought in the existence of ‘mah’.

Then the second milestone came. I held myself. Voilà!! I thought I solved the mystery. Good God! It’s the battery backup. mAh Milliamp Hour , the capacity of a battery to hold power.Mine is a 950mAh battery. A really good one!! Great backup!! But in her context, sounds rather stupid and absurd. Probably everyone has a Nokia these days. Why the hell I am failing.

There may be other trivial and redundant angles. Like boy friend’s name = ‘Mah’esh. My research and analysis out of this overwhelming curiosity made me discover Oxford Advanced Learner’s dictionary has just four words starting ‘Mah’.

Why do we complicate things when the solutions are pretty simple? All you need is a little common sense. Well simple ‘mah’ is just another word for ‘Maa’ meaning mother in Hindi.

Latest song “Maa” by Prasoon Joshi in the movie Taare Zameen Par is so touching that it wets your eyes. The love for mother is so true and so obvious. Beautiful girl, beautiful thought.

Days passed. One day I meet this Gen X++ guy who happened to be my junior; He invited me to join his network on Facebook. By now you must have guessed what happens next.The whole idea is that world has changed and so is India.

‘Mah’ actually means my. Sometimes ‘Ma’ can also be used synonymously. It is not to be confused with mother.

‘Z’ can be used and is extensively used for ‘is’.

‘Da’ = ‘the’.

‘Dose’= ‘those’ [;)]

‘Skul’= ‘School’ [not to be confused with skull].

‘Daz’= ‘days’.

‘Gal’,’gurl’’,grl’,’gul’,’grl’= ‘girl’

So on and on…..

So my friends you see English usage is so flexible these days. I am not trying to be sarcastic as long as things are accepted well in our moderate country. Neither I am trying to dig deep and know if it is the sms’es or hetero-culture inheritance that brought in this revolution.

Now to end I have a puzzle for you. Read the above paragraphs carefully and answer:

1. What is ‘malai’?
2. What is ‘fcook’?

If you could answer you definitely belong to the Gen X++ hip crowd.

For the ones who could not answer.

‘Malai’ means my life. [’mah’+ ‘life’]

‘Fcook’ mean fuck. [Fuck=fcuk= fcook].

Am I too ‘fcooked’, to write all this and waste my time and yours. One thing that is sure is we are either ‘culprits of our own design’ or we are liberated. We have no bounds now.

Mera Bhaarat ‘Mah’an.