A video that found its way into my inbox is one in which certain lady students of a prestigious Indian management institute are captured on film,walking down the street shouting obscenities at a rival college during an inter-college fest.
Some people are shocked at the language coming out of the mouths of students of one of the nation’s premier centers of learning. Some people, who are not so naive as the first group, are still dismayed that some of the corporate leaders of tomorrow, pursuing an advanced degree, would so “give in to the moment” fully cognizant of the fact that they were being recorded and that there exists the very real possibility that one of the persons watching this video may be a current or prospective employer/professor who may take a dim view of what he/she just saw? For most people however it is the fact that humanoids who remind us of our ma-behen are speculating about the anatomies of other people’s ma behen that is the most disturbing—-what has the country come to?
What would Nirupa Roy have done? Subject to the most terrible of depredations would she have said “Seth Dharmdas, tune ek widhawa ko beghar kar diya, uske beton ko bheekh maagne ke liye majboor kia…..teri maan ki….”?
Possibly not.
While I personally admire the girls’ college spirit, what disturbs me is the unimaginative nature of the expletives. Surely the best minds of the nation, who shall master the art of boardroom machinations, can do better than that follow the standard template of the “khisti” (which is “Bong” for expletive)—the done-to-death juxtaposition of one or more words that refer to particular parts of the human anatomy dealing with the ejection of bodily fluids, names of close relations usually female, names of certain species of animals and several action verbs. Surely there must be more innovative ways of deflating the opposition, pumping up the home team and letting loose the beast inside?
Let me offer two examples that will hopefully explain what I mean when I say “the right way to giving gaalis”.
A golden day in spring. The month of March. The green fields of Jadavpur. A soccer match is going on between two engineering departments. The goalkeeper is standing, knitted-brow. Concentrating. Right behind him stand supporters of the opposing team, ceaselessly barracking him. He blots them all out like the great sporting warrior that he is.
A bit of disturbance in the ranks of those assembled. A teenaged female beggar, notorious in Jadavpur for her persistence and the expletives that would rain from her sailor-like mouth if the alms did not meet her expectations, starts pulling at the shirts of the assembled students with her monotonous “Dao na dao na” (Give give). Someone gives her 10 rupees and tells her to do something.
A few moments later. The beggar girl is pulling at the jersey of the goalkeeper with her trademark insistence as he tries to concentrate on the feet of the advancing forwards. And that’s not all. She is shouting “Baba baba” (Dad dad), while laughing along with the crowd, as the red-faced goalkeeper keeps trying to move away.
While some may find the use of a beggar in this context heartless, the larger point here is how the opposition is humiliated and distracted all without the utterance of any obscenity. The expletive however is conveyed with none of its power compromised. Like the silent fart which wreathes havoc noiselessly, leaving behind no proof. Proof like an Youtube video.
And finally Exhibit 2. Note again how the expletive, despite being brutal and to-the-point lacks the cliched trappings of the conventional.
A cricket match between Mechanical and Chemical at Jadavpur University. I have to say beforehand that despite being in Computer Science, my heart was with the Mechanical boys. A department almost exclusively male, these people were about as macho as you could imagine (after all “macho” and “mechanical” sound so similar) . While the chemical boys did pretty colors in their beakers, the electrical pansies tinkered with wires in the “power lab”, the computer sissies did pitter-patter on keyboards the mechanical men would be in the workshops, scraping metal, making sparks fly all the while sweating like adult movie stars in full cry.
The Chemical batsman is thrashing the Mechanical bowlers with precise slogs and the occasional square cut. The Chemical girls are cheering, doing little jigs, and the Chemical supporters shouting “Baagher baccha” (The son of a tiger) each time the batsman hammers one to the boundary. The Mechanical crowd sits silent.
But as luck would have it, one delivery presently beats his swirling bat and disturbs the stumps.
Immediately, a Mechanical boy breaks the silence, a huge booming voice that seems to have come from the heavens.
I have one question for the “Baagh-er baccha”. Did his mother go to the zoo or did the tiger come to his house?
The Greatbong Blog & Podcast 
me FIRST?
i want a pink coloured i-pod.
“I have one question for the “Baagh-er baccha”. Did his mother go to the zoo or did the tiger come to his house?”
This was amazing 😉 Looking at the video, I felt that some of the girls had just learnt / ratofied the words and were saying it. Which led me to imagine, what if someone replaced Sonia Gandhi’s speech (spoken in Hindi,typed in Italian ) with one of these words. ….ki maa ki 😉
I had watched the video a few days back..didnt shock me either.A common mistake in India is to confuse academic achievment with piousness with the soul.Nothing can be farther from the truth.
“Like the
silent fart which wreathes havoc noiselessly, leaving behind no proof”
Never has GB spoken a truer word.The feeling of mutual distrust that a silent fart can create in a group of ppl make it a must-have weapon in ones armoury.
😀 must say I wasnt disappointed reading ur blog. Was recommended this by another fellow blogger..
let me read the previous ones now 🙂
Baagh-er baccha!
This seems to be paar for the course. A erudite Bangali gentleman was pondering about the Punjabi phrase “Sher-da-Puttar”, and had the exact same question. 🙂
Not related to this, but have you seen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM877VXgIts? It seems as though K-Jo stole this idea from one of your posts soon after KANK came out. Shame SRK’s not starring.
If the girls want to swear on video, let them swear. Like their male classmates, they’ve only themselves to blame if it comes back to haunt them.
“I have one question for the “Baagh-er baccha”. Did his mother go to the zoo or did the tiger come to his house? ”
LOL ….
oh by the way the youtube video was an “eye opener” 😛
OK..I know girls swear.. they use the standard expletives..but never seen any one, boys or girls, singing abuses like that 🙂
However, if you want to checkout experiments in abusing, goto Ghaziabad!
hi GB….. more than anything else, its your ability to find inspiration in the most unlikely, most mundane of things in life and creating something as entertaining as the above post, that i have come to like so much!!!
Reminds me of an incident in my hostel… there was a guy with prominently receeding hairline. Once we were sitting in a big group and someone called him “Taklu-dada” … this guy got angry and said … “Jo bhi mereko taklu bolega uska next 7 generations takla hoyega” … the other chap simply replied … “tere baap ko bhi kisine yehi baddua di hogi”.
Taklu dada left the room without a single word 😀
GB why are you “disturbed” … is it a) women uttering gaalis per se or b) the gross public display or c) both ???
I graduated from FMS, Delhi, I had female classmates who used worse language.
Yawn, big deal.
We did not You Tube it.
Actually u can replace XL by any college name in India in the expletive song and its pretty much commonplace ( i m not speaking for either side here..just stating the facts)….be it any IIT or IIM or any prestigious college….u have to see the inter iit sports fest for the extreme variety (they are innvoative too 🙂 ) of such songs….
The last line almost knocked me out of my chair… ROFL
You must admit, that question works far better in Bengali. It’s a pity the sharp wit of public exchanges has receded almost completely. It’s the age of unsubtle, unnuanced expressions of brutal violences, followed by a demonstration thereof. Streetw-wit is often hurtful and prejudiced, but hell, it’s far better than a bloody nose. Metaphorical or otherwise.
Tsk.
There is a new one going around in rediff message boards when somebody is trying to make sense and/or spell correctly:
“Are you Raja Sen?” *Shivers*
Your great words bring “shuorer bachaa” into an altogether new perspective.
Arnab – purani yaadein taaza ho gayi. There was a beast of a song in IITB, euphemistically christened ‘pungi’. It was the weapon of last resort in sports or cultural events and could only be deployed with the backing of many many chorus voices. It’s to crude to be written here.
There were also very serious gaali fights which happened at severallevels. Inter-hostel, intra-hostel usually the winner/loser of a battle will join hands after 5 minutes and attack a new band of innocents.
It is interesting when I was doing my B.A even f*** was rarely used, but then I think women colleges work differently. Or I am really a different generation altogether.
How can people, doing MBA in one of the leading institute in India(not in the world,IIMs don’t even come in top 50) can be so stupid? So stupid?
Are they so primitive to know the existence of youtube? I wonder, how they would perform in the world of strict corporate governance.
we all remember the IIPM issue don’t we?
itna bhokal kyon…if sm1 says asshole…its fine, trendy…bt if same person says G**** (cnt write the real word as it will be edited)…it creates a havoc…colonial effects
Witnessing the lack of innovation on the part of the girls, or whoever taught them to say the expletives, I strongly recommend taking classes in Creative Obscenity – 101 under Ibu Hatela. One example of Professor’s creativity which sprang in spur of a moment, –
“Hum tujhe mar mar ke aurat ke sharir ki aisi jagah bana denge,
jo fatke kha kha ke kaali ho jaati hai.
Har Jaban Pe Maa-Behen Ki gaali ho jaati hai.”
Jay Prabhuji.
An India-Sri Lanka test, at the Wankhede in Bombay. I am one of twenty people watching the game (on a weekday, college bunked by me), ten of whom are in my stand.
WXYZ Chaminda Vaas runs in and with all the (feeble) strength at his disposal puts a delivery short of length. The Indian wicket that it is, the ball barely goes up to chest level. Ganguly, facing him, ducks all the way down till his head are level with his knees to get under it.
A large man sitting behind me gets up and hollers…
“ABBE SAALE! BACHCHE KI JAAN LEGA KYA?!”
(two days later Ganguly proceeded to take apart the SL bowling, with one six over the stadium roof. Entertainment of a different kind!)
“conveyed without none of its power compromised“:
“conveyed with none of its power compromised”, or
“conveyed without any of its power compromised”.
Thanks for pointing that out.
you can’t blame them… today’s youth (includes me) has grown up listening to these songs below:
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=mK98csZHGjo
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=y_KT3sMR4CY
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=DHJ0qlCYBf8
The last one (the smoker’s anthem) has a refined version which was showed in MTV & other music channels….which kind of encourages the feeling that abusing is cool.
@Aditya: I think it was 2005 winter or spring 2006 when England visited India. I had gone with my friends to watch the test match at Nagpur. When Steven Harmison was fielding at the boundary (square) people shouted at him : ‘Harami’s Son’. When people saw that he was not reacting they went to Monty Panesar, who was also at the boundary (third man) and asked him to explain to Harmison what they meant.
Location: Rashtriya Vidayalaya College of Engineering Auditorium, Bangalore.
Time: Sometime in 2001, 11PM.
Ocassion: Night show of Betaab starring Amrita Singh and Sunny Deol.
Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-_EII3VUic
Once the song is over, Sunny Deols dog comes running towards the lead pair. Somebody shouts from the backseat:
“Kutta bol raha hai ab meri baari, ab merri baari.”
i remember a famous one by one of my fellow mates in college:
“Teri maa ko girgit c****, bhai behen rangeen paida honge”…now this is creative!
This is something I noticed while studying in iit kanpur : the maa-behen waali gaalis shouted with a full-throated preferably jaat twang works wonders as a mass mobilizer, perhaps second only to chants of Jai Shri Ram, in northern India. Leave the witticisms and sharp exchanges and the Mahayans and other such creative khistis to Bangali college canteens. And about Southies….do they even swear?
Place: Avtar Talkies near REC, Allahabad , Night Show
Movie: Prem Aggan ( Fardeen Khan’s nightmarish debut)
Audience: REC students trying to avoid the power cuts in the hostel peppered with some other bored Allahabadi folks. And of course, always smiling and shouting Chacha from civil engineering ( nicknamed chacha, because of his aged muchchad look and habit of wearing loose bermudas)
In that movie there was a song , where the heroine was trying to seduce Fardeen and was almost successful!
Achanak Fardeen removes himself. Heroine was surprised. Fardeen said, “Shaadi ke pahele yeh theek nahi hai” ( or kind of thing). The lady smiled and admitted
” Tum theek ho ….. Main to tumhari intehaan le rahi thi.”
Chacha immediately responded ” Intehaan to bahut hi tagdi thi. Agar hum hotey , to jaroor fail-ei hothey”
The whole theatre broke out laughing
In our defense, the expletives used are much much more creative, from both sides. Its just that the standard chant was featured in the video.
One question GB:
Did the Chemical Juniors ever call the Mechanical Seniors – Macho Da ?
capturing on tape just makes it seem worse. It happens everywhere, and far from few students use abusive language and it is just for fun … nobody takes it seriously and neither does anyone say it seriously. It is just another way to clear your throat or blow off your frustration or … just chill 😛
A motley North Indian crowd work with me in my office. From what I’ve noticed, Ma-Behen kind of phrases are their mainstay abuse. The north Indians feel that ‘Bokachoda’ is the sweetest ever abuse to be uttered. There’s this punjabi guy RK in my office who once tried to learn all the regional abuse he could – Bengali, Gujarati, Malayali, Tamil etc. RK asked one bengali colleague what’s the bengali equivalent of ‘Motherchod’. The Bengali guy replied in a snobbish way -“We don’t have that abuse in our language”. RK was very surprised and said “Tumhare wahan aise hote nahin kya?” No offences meant, but we never knew what to say 😛
One more expletive is nowadays very popular in Kolkata -‘Paglachoda’. It is used to appreciate someone’s genious effort/contribution e.g. ‘Yuvraj ajke paglachoda batting koreche'(Yuvraj batted in a Paglachoda way) 😛
Satrajit.
Oops, I forgot to put the asterisks 😦
paglachoda = f***ing crazy?!
@yesdee
Spot on! But wasn’t derived from the same phrase 🙂
well have read ur prev blogs, but this one truly disappoints
bachna….http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/45573
Nice post.
Those who are commenting, have you ever attended real-time boardroom meetings ? Do you know what exactly happens behind those closed doors ? Have you, for that matter, attended Monthly Sales Review Meetings of blue-chip corporates, where you get rogered out of shape for failing to meet your targets? Hindlever anyone ? Well, I have had the proud priviledge in attending such countless meetings, co-attended and cheer-leadered by recent and not-so-recent graduates from prestigious management institutes ( ladies and gentlemen included). Believe you me, the only language inside such rooms are all four letter words, in all shapes and sizes, in all major Indian tongues- which will never get documented in any Annual Reports.So whats wrong if that’s what they teach you informally at Business Schools ? And do you know what happens inside the bedrooms when two such illustrious corporate executives (husband-wife duo) fight and abuse each other, after a hard day’s work ? The alpahbet B in the context of B-schools assume a very different connote.
As they say, its the early bird that catches the worm.So let the expletive rule the roost.Boys and girls rejoice.
@kinjal
And about Southies….do they even swear?
Am surprised at this question. Speaking as a token southie and tamil from chennai, as it must be the case in other regions, the idea of prefixing and suffixing the swear words in each other sentence made the words so sterile it does not even register in most cases. The words sting only if spoken in other language/regional dialect.
Heck, southies are too pansy to swear. While we may be still living by the youth anthems Youth Gone Wild-Skid Row or our very own desi sutta song, they are afraid to even wear t-shirts to college just because of some stupid decree.
On a serious note, see what they are all worth:
Ah the sheer exhilaration of going wild 🙂
I see a conspiracy by those people in the video to turn everyone into homosexuals.
A thought occurred to me after reading your blog..what if, bhajji actually said “Maa ki..” in place of “Monkey” to symonds :D. I think foreigners should be given a crash course about such things..they would feel more homely that ways.
Your blogs reminds me of gaali fights we used to have between hostel 3 and hostel 4 in my college during power cuts at night. The louder you are and innovative you are, more popular you become. 🙂
Nostalgic video. The sing-song expletive took me back to the college days.Was wondering what prompted a 13-sec video to elicit a 65-lines forgettable response from the otherwise witty GB? Lack of imagination on the part of IIM-C girls or gender bias from GB ?
eeks
it’s the way they sound
I guess expletives require style and most importantly, confidence
Theres something sweet and innocent abt those kids in the video. reminds me of a cousin of mine, when she was 5 or 6 yrs old would keep saying ‘Pond. Pond… (unspellable bong word for bum) or ‘nunu, nunu, nunu…’ while her frantic parents tried to shut her up.
It’s shocking how these women from one of the top institutes of India blatantly lack panache! Cmon people, haven’t most of us from the great b-school (c-school in my case) tribe seen better & more elegant versions of the same. the bum who posted the video on youtube should be hanged….exposing the best mode of education in b-schools is a grave crime, putting the delivery process of MBA education at risk.
On a more serious note, the open-ness & the lack of hypocricy in places like these contribute a lot to an individual in terms of at least building a perspective. It kicks the fear of women being from another planet for at least 80% of the newbies in a b-school, who are rather awkward with women initially. acts like these & songs like sutta, xl ki kudiyan, gmd, etc. complete the curve. lets not even try to put a stop to a process that has done nothin but deliver gold, year after year.
@anomit,
“Southies” are too pansy to swear?? Good gawrsh. Just because we don’t speak Hindi doesn’t mean that we don’t swaer. You don’t understand it. It outshines all your pansy expletives. Especially Malayalam, which is my tongue. I’ve heard gaalis in most languages. In sheer obscenity and creativity, Malayalam beats everyone hollow. We consider sister gaalis to be too pansy. Nothing less than mother. Get a translation of this..
http://malluhere.blogspot.com/2007/10/thaanaro-thannaro.html
The comments below the video are even more amazing. Check out the one by a Jay1970 who calls them “bitches” and says he is going to remember them and not recruit them when his company goes for campus placements because “I don’t need any foul mouthed bitches working for me.”
I tend to feel this works out best for everybody concerned because I don’t think any woman should be working for this bastard anyway!
@ shan
Yeah i saw that comment too…. imagine a busy hot shot senior exec two years hence trying to match faces of interviewees with those in a blurry video. ‘miss, will you please repeat the phrase ma ka bhosda clearly and loudly for the benefit of the panel please?’
Arnab, back here after a long time – may be two years and am reading through your recent posts – you’ve only got better with time.
I must share this hilarious incident that happened this weekend. I play club cricket in the Middlesex league, and this Saturday a 17-year old Indian leg spinner playing for opponents was completely bamboozling us with his variety. After he’d completely broken through our top order, in walks our wicket-keeper (an explosive Aussie, both with his bat and mouth) with me at the non-strikers end. After being unable to even block the first 7-8 balls, he just looks up and asks the bowler: “are you Shane Warne’s love child??”
Half the fielders were rolling on the ground and the match had to be stopped for about 5 min!!
Trust women to utter even gaalis in a sing-song jingle style!
@Jak: You’ve no idea, you’ve no idea. Get someone to translate the posts in the “bangla khisti” community on orkut. Poetic assassination, I’d say :p
@anomit
Haven’t been to that comm lately. Used to be great fun. I remember one thread where names of famous movies were porn-parodied.
that video was pathetic, clearly it appears rehearsed and putting on a show for the camera, doubt if they even understand the meaning of what they are blurting out…if they were street urchins yes…they are hard core….but these are students of a prestigious school and look from respectable families. May be I am being naive here………You expect behavior like this either from the rural hillibilles or urban ghetto dwellers.
That Nirupa Roy dialog is the funniest thing I’ve been subjected to since Nirupa’s last appearance on film.
lol@km
@anomit
Heck, southies are too pansy to swear.
By answering your post, I am in a bizarre position of praising the south for its badmouthing ability. Anyway, just in case you wander down to Chennai and looking for auto/cigarette/life, assume that the person you are going to talk to, starts finishes and possibly fills his entire speech with cuss words and possibly wont even realize it. But you claim anything you dont understand is not a swear word, then you can swan around anywhere in south without getting offended. But the natives are going to have their fun nevertheless.
Arnab,
You are going to give me a heart attack. During our days (edited out)in one year there was a single female in the 1st year. That phenomenon nearly gave the whole department a hard-on. However the other depts were mildly disapproving as she was a bit flat chested. Quite understandably they named her the popular bong expletive – nemai. The electricals circulated an even more imaginative explanation of the term. They explained that the term ‘Nemai’ actually meant Negetive Mai (negetive breasts) in scientific terms! Oh good old JU.
@ Cliff
Dude….i guess a reality check might help….sorry to dissillusion you but being an insider & to be very frank with you…this is not even the tip of the iceberg. this act is in no way an indicator of academic brilliance/ managerial abilities/ value systems/ whatever else. more often than not, the perpetrators of these acts of verbal terror are the smartest of guys & girls who come from excellent families & end up doing exceedingly well in life. it’s merely another module of management education at display!
Girls doing ma-behen is actually no big deal, especially in North India. In fact Punjabi children learn ma-behen galis from their mas and behens. It is actually uncommon in South India. But whatever it is, IIM students uttering such obscenities is very juvenile. We used to talk like that when we were in middle school. But people mature with age. In US, these kind of things are seen as a lack of education. You can utter them informally once you know someone, but such pointless rants are generally seen as attitude problems. So young girls here are generally like that when they are in high school and think that they have seen everything in this world. That is generally the time they work for McDonalds. College and its subsequent experiences of being used and tossed several times, grades, debt, jobs, tough economy etc. welcome them to the harsh real world. So if an adult of corresponding age is doing that near a B school campus here, chances are that shes just a high school grad who never went to college and has cranked out 2 babies in the meanwhile. The girls behavior in that video is not befitting their status as premier B school students.
@poochandi: Those guys in Chennai can do no better than that ;). There is obviously no point in abusing me in a language I won’t understand. Anyways, talking to the autowallahs there is useless. It is hardwired in their brains to filter out any language other than tamil. I actually can’t draw any such conclusions about mallus though. A few of my good friends are mallus and also I’ve never been to Kerala.
Summing up: Considerable lack of badassery is what I wanted to emphasize.See those two youtube videos I posted. If anything like that is ever introduced in colleges in bengal, expect a total shutdown. I’m not saying that it is a good thing, but then some level of activism is necessary when your fundamental rights are being trampled upon. One needn’t be a guerrilla like Che but being a spineless wimp isn’t a good option either.
Coming back to the topic, those who think something is wrong with this whole phenomenon, why does it strike you so hard when some chicks are hurling profanities on camera? All of you, yes, all of you haven’t yet gone through a single day since your school life where you haven’t cursed. Take my word, you are going to do it even when your throbbing nuts become as dry as almonds. So stop being hypocrites and making a fool out of yourselves. Someone’s talents in other spheres of life aren’t affected by it. I’m so tempted to borrow someone’s phrase and label you all ‘wanking walruses’.
@ anomit
Bravo 🙂
@Adi,
Enlighten me my friend!. I am a corporate kind of dude, half my time is spend attending meetings, occasional profanities are thrown around but it is never personal or ethnic kind, I am talking about working with people of all colors in mainstream corporate world in technology industry. Differences are discussed and settled, if it cannot be settled, someone either walks out the door or shown the door in a real nice way with minimal hard feelings.
Even in professional institutions, people mind their own business, if one doesn’t fit in…..there is no undue pressure or bullying.
Again…….call me old school or naive….I can take it like a man 🙂
Cliff
@anomit
//Anyways, talking to the autowallahs there is useless.It is hardwired in their brains to filter out any language other than tamil.//
Talk about weird coincidence! A similar thing happened to me in Calcutta. No taxi driver could understand anything other than Bengali. It is only fair that the one crore people of Calcutta learn Tamil so that I dont feel inconvenienced when I come for a two day trip to the US consulate. It obviously does not make sense that I should learn Bengali before coming to Calcutta. Thanks for the heads up, next time you traipse down here, we all be ready to abuse you in hindi/bengali/swahili whatever that you are comfortable getting offended.
//they are afraid to even wear t-shirts to college just because of some stupid decree.//
Stupid decree indeed.
@ anomit
Summing up: Considerable lack of badassery is what I wanted to emphasize.See those two youtube videos I posted. If anything like that is ever introduced in colleges in bengal, expect a total shutdown.
Things done in large groups are usually called as strike, bandh, hartal or orgy. Badassery is not one of them.
You forgot one more thing. Effective and visible assertion of one’s claim to some basic rights that are accepted universally. It put the british out of this country and also was the vehicle for numerous civil disobedience movements and revolutions all round the world. If that doesn’t count as being badass in today’s parlance, I donno what does.
It seems some people like so much being led about their noses by some ‘authority’, they forget what it is like to stand up for themselves.
C’mon now admit it, you are just arguing for the heck for it. You conveniently decided to skip the part where I explicitly mentioned shutdowns at the drop of a hat are not the perfect solution to every problem. But oh my! You are so clever.
@anomit
//Effective and visible assertion of one’s claim to some basic rights that are accepted universally.//
Couldn’t agree with you more on this. I was not defending the students of that college, stupid rule. And don’t contest your assertion that not all shutdowns are solution, hence i didn’t answer to that.
//It put the British out of this country and also was the vehicle for numerous civil disobedience movements and revolutions all round the world. If that doesn’t count as being badass in today’s parlance, I donno what does.//
This is the funniest bit. Dont you think you are stretching a little bit here?! If the college guys had come out against today’s hartal in Calcutta, that would have been real badassery. Not against an academic.
I feel quite historical since I have a link with both the video and the stories.
The video is shot at my alma mater and I am from JU Mechanical.
You are so right… the Chem guys were wimps!
It is really good to know that they are still speaking in Hindi and not using the “f” bombs.
Judging by the popular media, it seems that mother tongue of all Indians is English
@poochandi-
“Talk about weird coincidence! A similar thing happened to me in Calcutta. No taxi driver could understand anything other than Bengali. It is only fair that the one crore people of Calcutta learn Tamil so that I dont feel inconvenienced when I come for a two day trip to the US consulate. It obviously does not make sense that I should learn Bengali before coming to Calcutta.”
Thats a very good point mate! Trust me when I tell you, when I went to Chennai and had inconvenience in communicating, I was pissed off too. Now that I am away from both Bengal and Chennai, it helps me to reflect and understand how wrong I was to expect what I expected. Your sarcastic comment is therefore very apt. And I am a proud Bengali saying this.
Wot a punchline!! 😀 ROFL
@poochandi- Bhai, have you really been to Calcutta? More than half the taxi drivers there are from Bihar/Jharkhand & know only a smattering of Bengali at best.
@yourfan2,
Thanks! The example of Calcutta is just incidental.
@Vivek4mJH-Bhai,
See answer above. You are missing the point. Yes, I have been to Calcutta, had a great time there!
poochandi, how about a plank called Hindi? Most bengalis would suck badly at speaking it, but atleast they’ll surely understand and respond. Unlike what happens at chennai.
And hell yeah, abusing someone in a language he understands is the only way to get through to him. Otherwise you are just wasting your energy. Did I forget to mention a caveat that comes with such behaviour, a black eye namely?
few of the rhymes that used to do rounds especially during girls matches at the basketball court during my years as an undergrad at IT BHU were:
IT BHU Ghode par
Baki Sab udu udu udu
( everyone knew what it means but prof were happy we didnt use the main word )
10 number Maal hai
Baki sab Kangaal hai
( This 10 number was a hot girl from IIT K, i still remember her name, it has been 8 years 🙂 )
10 number Malai hai
Baki sab Khai hai
( this praising one girl’s beauty had a devastating affect on the motivation of the whole team as actually that girl used to feel happy by such comments and others as a consequence jealous )
@anomit
so no payoff, eh? I had convinced the people of Chennai not to be a pansy and start swearing, then it was found it was not enough, so they had to cram Hindi so that they can abuse in it.Now all they are getting is a black eye? Maybe i should explain that as an occupational hazard in a career in badassery(TM). So what is the plan? You are the only person coming down and distributing black-eyes or all your college buddies will be around too?
Hindi as a plank? Maybe the good people of Calcutta find it useful to converse, maybe the people in Chennai don’t find it useful. That should be the only criteria isn’t it? How am I going to benefit by learning something new?
Why not English then, it is the de facto standard. Instead of collecting black eyes in India, we can all collect black eyes around the world.
@GB,
Thanks for indulging me thus far. Let me know when is the time to get off the lawn!
Now all they are getting is a black eye?
poochandi, cause and effect, sire. Also, we have digressed quite far.
I guess, in college we all have went overboard with our non-creative expletives. At one point during my education I had created a matrix where you put your relations on one axis and body parts on the other (or other variants) to work out all the possible things you could create. Very soon the charm of regular stuff went away as they became part of the vocabulary and we graduated to sentence based expletives.
I had heard the tiger one in a different context as a joke but the beggar girl one is too good and sounds ingenious.
Coming from the same dept of JU ( I am also a South Pointer ) and now trying to get a PhD from an american univ, I sometimes take it for granted that many of your anecdotes and views would match mine , but this one here takes the cake . The football and cricket arenas have enriched the vocabulary of JU students like nothing else. Carry on Arnab-da.
As an ex-JU FET student Baagher Bachcha was an all too common phrase that almost all of us used during Arena. But this incident had possibly stayed on in the minds of older folks … so once when somebody from our deptt had used a similar cheer for our team (thrice arena champions Production) … and soon after Sourav Basu’s wicket fell … the same question was asked by Mechanical’s “hulo” Saptarshi. Much mayhem ensued and the match was needlessly disrupted … but we had a hearty laugh all the same, notwithstanding our allegiances. I guess … JU’s anecdotes repeat often enough to keep all batches entertained.
not sure why this video elicited a blog.. understand the lack of creativity in gaalis but felt some gender bias.. gals doing this.. OMG and all that crap..
well having led gaali fights in the same insti eons ago.. i can surely reflect and see why these seemingly random customs (yep there are even weirder customs such as tire-raid etc) were there in the first place.. i am sure all these gals are super-smart.. and they usually wont be like this in any other situation..
such tribal rituals actually builds team spirit and let people get out of the comfort zone (very important for succeeding in any walk of life).. if you cant make a fool of urself, life wud be too serious to enjoy.. real education in IIT/M happens outside the classroom.. you learn more about yourself in such situations..
the frnds that you make in these situations, remain with you forever.. and they are the ones who will nominate you to the board.. no one recalls who mugged the most.. but everyone remembers who was the most fun guy to be with
and being gals and abusing.. so 1900’s to be surprised..
as someone else said.. there is a ton of creativity but the regular chant is shown
and finally, kids will be kids.. let them be.. one has to experience the wild side to appreciate the tamer stuff
loved the “Bagher Bachha” bit :).. you have not lost the edge even at 4.. congrats
one from my side please….
i remember this from my times in the Hostel of DCE, my roommates used to exchange the choicest of abuses (but all in good spirit though..haah!)…..and then after a while one of them wud go “abey yaar!! MAA-BAAP ko to ghaseet beech main…Imaan se bhai, jab tak maa-baap na aayein tab tak gaali deney ka mazaa hi nahi aata”…
Being an alumni of JU ( & SPHS) and studying at an IIM recently, I can vouch for the fact that poor souls heralding from other parts of India seriously lack an enriched vocabulary of expletives. Mother**** and Behen**** form their staple diet. I have tried to teach them some classics from JU but they got frustu and I caught lyad. 🙂
I kinda read most of your blogs. This is probably your worst work ever. Not only is this your worst blog out all what you have written but is also one of the worst I have come across among the other fellow Bloggers in recent times! You should have left a Caveat at the beginning of this blog about it being Truely Third Class! You can’t be funny all the time, I agree, but I suggest it is better not to write than write for the sake of it!
As far as your book is concerned, 60-70% of it is a good read. When I read your book I got a feeling that I am reading a frivolous & trite blog; I did not feel satiated after reading your book. Nevertheless a good attempt!