“Ji, dhekho, papa bi koi bura word nahi hai, haaaaauun”
“English please, Swathi”
“Look Saru, she is your daughter too. Don’t keep blaming me for everything. Start taking some responsibility. If you would have done that, she would have
started addressing you as ‘appa’ now. It just means that you are not spending
enough time with her” – the boomerang had to come back eventually. Saravanan had not learnt a thing in his 10
years of marriage.
But this is how it has been over the years for Saru. It is half Saravanan Meenatchi on Vijay TV and
half Saason ki sangam on Star Plus. Mour
Kuzhambu on one day and Mutter Paneer on the other. Rajnikanth movie a month and Ranbir Kapoor
flick the other.
Saravanan was, and is the pachaiyest among all the pachai
thamizhans from Madhurai working at Infosys in Chennai. That is where the intra national
collaboration happened. Swapna was
struggling to handle the Macy’s project all by herself and as any dutiful men would
do, Saru went way beyond his capacity to help her out to successfully complete the
project. Yes, Swapna was an above
average hindi figure. That makes it the
moral responsibility for Saru to work over nights on behalf of her, while she
connected with her friends in Lucknow.
Fast forward 6 months, and boom – Kaadhal happened for Saru
and Pyaar, ishq, mohabbat happened for Swapna.
His amma/appa and her papa/mamma also said seri/haan for the
wedding.
“Swathi, I will go get myself a Jibba. What do you say?” He wanted to dress up for the Luknow
reception.
“What the hell is a Jibba?“ Asked poor Swathi
He had to google a pic of Hrithik Roshan wearing one in
Kabhi Kushi Kabhi Gham
“Are, this is Kurtha.
What did you call it? Jabbaa?”
Saru – 0 Hindi – 1.
It was just the beginning.
A marriage in two cities was daunting. More daunting was their inability to manage
the usual meet and greets with the guests.
That was the first time they felt out of place and started realizing the
scope of what they were getting into starting with the travel.
While Saru had business going to Luknow now, the domestic
airline had no business connecting Madurai and Luknow directly. They had to do 3 stop overs in Chennai,
Delhi, Kanpur and finally reach there.
“enna kannu, ponnu nalla mahalakshmi maari irruka. Nee romba lucky da” – Saru’s Chitti’s
greeting had Swathi kept guessing in Madurai reception.
“Jeethe raho bache.
Aap kabhi ghar aake chai wai peeke chalna, teek hai beta?” – all Saru
could do was to keep a wide smile and the 180 degree horizontal head-nod
on. Even if some one would have asked for
his house and car at that time, he would have happily agreed with his nod.
He realized at that point that he should have picked up some
hindi by watching Bollywood movies. The
only hindi movie he saw was Rangeela a decade ago, but the purpose there was
not to learn hindi. Damn you distracting
Urmila.
He would keep this nod for the entire reception ceremony at
his Pugungtha Veedu.
Hello Jeeju kaisen hai aap? Swathi’s cousins introduced
themselves.
Illema, enaku joose ellam venam….Sorry, no thank you. I just
had juice’u.
Saru, I told you before. Jiju means brother-in-law. Stop embarrassing me. I taught you all these on our flight
here. But Saru’s Hindi ignorance was
beyond a 1 hour crash course.
Over the years, when there were situations for him to travel
to Luknow by himself, he would carry a piece of paper with the address written
in Hindi and would show it to the driver and ask him to “idhar Javooo” pointing
finger at the paper. He would pretend
reading a newspaper throughout the ride to avoid the small talk that the Luknow
wala might begin.
It was worser than the Vadivelu’s idhar aavoo comedy that he
used to watch all the time. He realized
that seeing a Vadivelu on screen getting humiliated was hilarious, but being a
vadivelu in Luknow was humiliating, to say the least.
If this was the case with an airport Taxi driver, his
experience with street vendors were exponentially worse. He knew Ek, Dho and Theen and for anything
beyond that his number systems would take a severe hit. Forget about the kilogram weights and ‘assi
rupay dhedho bhaiyaa’ types. All he
could do was to carry as many 100 and 500 rupee notes as possible and give the
vendors and take back whatever change the vendors were willing to give
back. Dignity preserved!
“papa, aap kahan kho gaye ho aap?” Shwetha woke Saru up from
his flashback. Looking back, it definitely
seemed funny and made for great stories down the line. Now Shwetha bridges the language divide
between parents. A lot is also being
communicated through silence after these 10 years. Cause you know, yeh rishta hai janmo ka!
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