Kannada Gothilla

Transcript of a top-secret phone call made on Saturday (02-Jun-2007).
How about a party tonight?
Ok. Where?
Gangothri.
Fine! But, how many guys will come?
Four. Maybe five.
Cool.
8:30 P.M, ok.
Ok.

I was doing the inviting and Tony (a.k.a. Pullachen) was the one getting invited. Turn to your Bangalore’s hip and happening places guide and you won’t find an entry for Gangothri. Leaf through Bangalore pubs, you still won’t find an entry. If any one has recorded the names and addresses of all second class, badly run places in Bangalore, well in that case you may (and that’s a big may) find it somewhere at the bottom of the list (Between Chennappas bar and Gangammas beauty parlor.)

It was a long time, roughly two months, since we had held a general body meeting of all the drunkards in Bangalore. In fact, things were getting so bad that we had every possibility of finding ourselves in the teetotaler list! Believe me, that is one list I don’t want to find myself in, at least in the near future.

Me and my engineering buddies, we were never too well known on account of our punctuality*. But fact is, we are a punctual lot, in fact we pride ourselves to be at a place before time. Problem was that, the so called “authorities” who distribute these punctuality awards aren’t looking at the correct places. Like, if they just looked at Gangothri bar at 8:25 P.M they would have found 4 engineers huddled around a table, having a nice time.

After about half an hour of waiting, a waiter shows up. “Sir, order maadi.. and something else in Kannada”. We look at him and shake our heads…..”Kannada Gothilla, hindi maalum?” “Hindi…something else in Kannada” we being exceptionally gifted guys, understand immediately that he said he doesn’t know Hindi.

Deepak: Great, what do we do now?

Waiter repeats the first sentence again, a lot of hand gestures (not the rude ones!) head shakes and basically blah blah blah in Kannada. At last we get the gist, he is asking us to order all things in one shot, the food, the liquor and the cigarettes.

I: Big frown on my face.
Rest: Bigger frown on their faces.

This is not normal modus operandi. Any one with even a little experience about bars would know that you first make a small order, and then you order again and again till you either drop down or the cash burns out.

I: Ok, whatever, lets order something and get started, I am hungry… and thirsty!
Others: Ok.

Chapter 1 Order-1
1 Egg Burji
2 Finger chips
1 Pepper mutton fry
2 Haywards five thousand beer.
1 KF canned beer.
2 Baccardi Breezer lemon flavour (for me!)

Waiter: Finger chips illa (illa = no)
Us: Ok, bring the rest (message conveyed using advanced hand signaling)

He jots down the order in two pieces of paper, one for the liquor and another for food and departs.

A short while later, he comes back with the liquor and I find that instead of lemon he has brought cranberry breezers. No food though.

My Law: the number of engineers gathering at a place is directly proportional to the number of pegs to be had and inversely proportional to the number of lectures to be suffered. So it was not very surprising that four more friends came within another 15 minutes to join us. Now we were huddled across two tables.

After much calling and hooting the waiter returns. We ask him, where is the food?

Waiter: Tells something in Kannada, which basically means that he, lost the order.
We are angry, but the pegs in the belly have soothed us into an affable mood so we repeat the order

Chapter 2 Order-2
1 Egg Burji
1 Pepper mutton fry
1 Peanut masala.

Waiter dutifully jots down the order, takes the liquor order from the new arrivals and leaves. We get the liquor in about half an hour. Its rush time so nobody is complaining and with 8 people on board there is a lot of leg pulling going on.

When the liquor comes, we ask him for food again. He shakes his head and says…. Well he said something in Kannada which we took to be that he lost the order again!

Chapter 3 Order-3
1 Egg Burji
1 Pepper mutton fry
1 Peanut masala.
Repeat order for liquor.

Whoever said “history repeats” was no fool! The very same thing happened again. We were having pegs in our bellies but our affability levels were on a fast paced decline. By this time I was really fuming, I needed to get the order across somehow.

I: do you know Hindi?
Waiter: No (I already knew what his answer would be!)
I: do you know Tamil?
Waiter: No
I: do you know English?
Waiter: No
I: do you know Malayalam?
Waiter: No

I won’t say how, but we managed to repeat the order once more, making sure that he jotted it all down.

Chapter 4 Order-4
1 Egg Burji
1 Pepper mutton fry
1 Peanut masala.

I have seen some bad services, but this one topped the list easily! A waiter in a Bangalore bar, who doesn’t know Hindi, Tamil, and Malayalam or English… That was a rarity. Normally they know all south Indian languages + Hindi + a little bit of English too.

Chapter 5 Introspection
This time around, he brought the food (at last!). It took about half an hour, during which I did some constructive thinking.
I: how long have you been in Bangalore?
Me: Three years!
I: Is Kannada a tough language to learn?
Me: No, its rather similar to my mother tongue, it should be fairly easy to learn.
I: Then why haven’t you learnt it even after 3 years???
Me: Whoa, hold on! I stay with mallus, I work with Northies I chat with Bengalis and see Tamil movies. How am I supposed to learn Kannada from any of them?
I: Bad excuses buddy!
Me: Ok, but I do know a few important Kannada words, hogi, maadi, gothilla etc. I have managed to survive with these words till now.
I: But not good enough to handle a pure Kannadiga.
Me: Hmmm… true, as we just found out!

Chapter 6 The result
My part of the bill from the bar: Rs 225.
“Learn Kannada through English” CD that I bought later: Rs 300.

If you are a firm believer that bars should be closed and liquor prohibited, let this be an eye opener. So many good ideas are born in a bar….:)

Say NO to Kannada Gothilla!

*If you know a way to be punctual and still bunk your classes, just let me know, ok