buhut chaas lagee hai yaar November 5, 2009
Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi in lingo, people, social, urdu.5 comments
this post is intended to be a sequel to inglish cheetay.
one of the few drawbacks to being from karachi, apart from the fact that there is no real urdu version for the term “karachiite” – though “karachvi” would be the linguistically appropriate word – is the problem that you don’t really fit in if you don’t drink tea. not that tea is a homegrown concept. its one of the enduring vestiges of colonialist times like cricket, gora complex and the design of the suzuki mehran. but tea has become so entrenched in karachiite lifestyle that it forms an essential part of family life, social ettiquette and business for the advertising industry (the tea wars are far more severe than the famed cola wars of the west). such is the common addiction to tea that most karachiites above thirty, no matter how they might feel about the rest of the white race, would probably excuse sir thomas lipton from the fishaar-e-qabr if they were given the option to.
of course, such an obsession spawned a new vocabulary. we have all heard of doodh patti and karak. bollywood introduced us to cutting. evn the most illiterate and underexposed street kid on a karachi street is aware of what bag wali chai is. and this brought the word “chaas” into existence. a combination of pyaas (thirst) and chai (tea), it is used to denote a strong desire to have a cup of tea and usually strikes a person with extreme severity after meals and at the times of 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.
without too much ado, i would like to present the second (and very belated) instalment of karachi’s own version of an urban dictionary.
hut jaana also tap jaana, bhin hona, bhinnot ho jana, meter ghoom jaana, sitak jaana, pin ho jana, and sulag jaana: the term is used to denote entirely the same sentiment as the english term “pissed off”. the usage is elementary – hamid ko mat chhairo, us ki buhut jaldee hut jatee hai.
tafreeh laina or simply laina (with the past tense tafreeh lay lee or lay lee): not to be confused with the rather more obscene laina as it is used in northern punjab this refers to cracking a joke at someone’s expense, making fun of someone or making someone look like a fool after playing a prank on them or doing something calculated to tease them. e.g. hamid ki laina buut aasaan hai, bus woh bunyaan wali baat yaad dila do.
chhoka: literally a boundary (4 runs) scored in cricket, it refers to a choice wisecrack which is likely to be remembered and frequently quoted. it normally follows what is known as a loose ball (a statement that could be liable to much ridicule) much the same way as it would in a real game of cricket. e.g hamid bhi itni loose ball karata hai, bacha bacha chhoka maar ker us ki lay leta hai.
chikna (superlative = madan chikna): no karachiite should call him/herself a karachiite without knowing what this means. literally meaning slick (the normal use not the slang use), it is used to refer to something cool, nice, desirable or hot. if used to describe a man it is complimentary and if used to describe a woman it is rude, risque and somewhat derogatory in the sense that it completely objectifies the female. not to be used when addressing your girlfriend. as in yaar, hamid jaisay chumpoo nay itnee chiknee bandi kaisay pata lee?
tight: a slightly more polished version of chikna, it is closely related to the north punjabi “fit“. used when being appreciative of something or someone, as in hamid, yaar, aaj tu nay baree tight kitting ki hai, koi bachi se setting chal rahi hai kya?
set: well. picked from the english “all set” it has become very popular as a cheery enquiry about someone’s health and conditions, in the question form of “sab set hai?” the term acquired even more prominence after a sitcom called sab set hai hit the airwaves in the first half of the current decade.
setting: not even remotely related to set, it refers to an established romantic relationship between a girl and a boy. hamid ki rukhsana se setting chal rahee hai. the verb form, set karna, is used to describe the act of courtship. hamid ki setting nahin hai, abhi to rukhsana ko set kernay ki koshish hee kar raha hai magar woh lift nahin kara rahee.
chhanraybaazee: a term slightly hard to decribe in english, it is something between flirting and strutting around to attract a girl’s or several girls’ attention. normally used to refer to the antics of the louts who hang around near the girls’ colleges in the city. hamid aur us ke dost roz rukhsana ke college ke baahir chhaanraybazee kernay puhunch jatay hain.
jaan pe hitler ho jana: a reference to hitler’s notorious regime of terror, it is used to refer to the act of persistent nagging. abay yaar, jub se hamid ko pata chala ke rukhsana ka meray ghar aana jaana hai, jaan pe hitler ho gaya hai ke us ka mobile number day.
chingum ho jana: chingum is the desi pronunciation for chewing gum and the term is drawn from the stickiness of a discraded piece of gum (often a tool for pranks at karachi’s schools). it is used to describe the act of being clingy to someone. rukhsana bata rahee thee ke aaj kal hamid us se bilkul hee chingum ho gaya hai, jaan chura nahi paa rahee hai. a variant is qambal (blanket) ho jana.
kro thio bha? September 1, 2009
Posted by Mystic in food, history, karachi, lingo, people, social.2 comments
Contributing writer, Mystic, writes about his community members.
okay so as suggested by abbas, here is an attempted post on the most influential business community of karachi, the memon community!!
yes i am a memon, but not quite. i do not speak the language, nor do i understand it. i do not follow the typical customs and traditions and usually i do not sound like a memon (awaiting comments where people cite examples of me sounding like a memon…go ahead, make my day!). but yes, i am a memon. an insult to the community because of the above factors but the fact remains that i am one of them.
so here goes a small history lesson on memons where i attempt to understand them and find myself somewhere along the way.
did you guys know that memons are defined as an ethnic group? how cool is that! i mean i’m not just a plain urdu speaking pakistani from karachi, i belong to a distinct group, though one that does not enjoy a very good reputation being the butt of plenty of jokes. but who cares, i’m different!
annyywayyy, memon is an adaptation of the arabic word “momin” meaning faithful. who knew that? i have to thank abbas for suggesting a post on this because am learning some new stuff here.
there are various theories in history as to the origins of memons but there are two that are the most common. one, that the memons were originally arabs and came to the sub-contitnent as part of Muhammad bin qasim’s army where they were known as “Maymenah”, meaning right wingers. over time, as is the habit of our people to ruin names, Maymenah became memon.
the second theory is that the inhabitants of thatta converted to islam and were banished by their hindu brothers and were invited by the then ruler of gujrat to come and settle there. note that this is 1548 that we are talking about. upon conversion they were called momin which was again modified to memon by the winds of time.
whichever theory u choose to believe, there is a rich history there including faith, spirituality and war and conflict.
i belong to a group of memons called “cutchi” memons who trace their ancestors to kutch in gujrat. then there are the “halai” memons who trace their origins to kathiawar, again in gujrat and then there is third group which stayed back in sindh.
the language is as foreign to me as is malayalam or tamil. it sounds weird though i do regret the fact not knowing the language because often there comes a time where u want to say something u do not wish for another person to understand. but oh well, ab nahin aati toh nahin aati.
interestingly enough, it is only the halai memons who speak the language called memoni. the cuthci group speaks a kutchi dialect while the group from sindh speaks sindhi and the memoni language is actually a combination of the two.
the word “jamat” is heard quite often when referring to memons. the role of the jamat is considered quite important within the various groups of the memon community. the jamat basically serves as a social welfare centre for the group and provides rules and guidelines and includes the issuance of marriage licenses and resolution of matrimonial disputes. i have to admit that i have only been to the jamat once in my life and that was also during ramadan to give alms. i have never attended a gathering there and so far that is not something i regret.
memons have had an important role to play in the development of not just the city of karachi but also the nation as a whole. however, sticking just to karachi, the memon’s have contributed immensely to the growth of the city (i am choosing to ignore the corrupt factors). you can go to any gathering of your choice, any school or college or a place of work, and you are sure to run in to a few memons. the biggest players of the karachi stock exchange belong to the memon community, some of the biggest business groups such as the Adamjee Business Group and the Fecto Group of Indsutries to name a couple of long running groups and the JS Group and the Westbury Group of Companies to a name of couple of the more recent market forces.
did you guys know that iqbal qasim, former pakistani cricketer from the 1980’s was also a memon?
then there are Abdul Sattar Edhi and Mushtaq Chhapra, founders of the Edhi Welfare Trust Foundation and The Citizens Foundation respectively.
and to all those, including me, who consider memons kanjoos, here is a list of their social contributions:
well social contributions aside, i still consider them kanjoos 😛 now i guess i’m moving on to the fun/mean/rude part for a bit. i cannot help it. whereas i admit that i am part of the community and their contributions above, if they are the butt of jokes, then its not wrong because for most part of it, they deserve to be! u see a guy walking down the street with hair patted down with pints of oil and having a side parting and he’s got a paan ki laali on the corner of his mouth, you can rest assured that he is a memon! racist? no. stereotypical? maybe. fact? yes!
the accent does not help them either. there is this certain twang most of them have not been able to hide when they speak a language other than memoni/kutchi/sindhi that easily separates the memons from the non. but what i realised is that they are oblivious to this fact and i am going to borrow something from russell peters here.
“i dont think that they know that they’re being made fun of. even when you say a memon joke to their face, they think that there is this one person somewhere on the face of this earth who is being made fun of. i seriously believe that is what they think the reality of it is!” poor bastards!
and well no post of mine is complete without a reference to food. some of the most amazing desi places in town have been setup by memons, such as meerat, noorani kabab house, memon food centre and baakra hotel. how can i forget the gola gandas in dhoraji going by the names of salim qadir ka uncle gole and qadir salim ka amla gola! but these are outside places and i know i do not appreciate and follow a lot of the traditional customs but i do enjoy a good plate of khowsay (a mix of a different sort of qeema with the traditional desi curry minus the pakoras and noodles topped with slims or any other sort of crispy garnish you like..sounds weird but dont knock it till you’ve tried it) and a few maal puras which i like to call pancake ka baap (small round sweet fried flour thingys, crispy on the edges, soft in the centre)! sorry but food excites me..
i guess this has been quite a lesson. hope i made some sense out of it. don’t think i got anywhere though. oh and as for the title of this post, it means “kya hua bhai?” or for some of the english, “wassup brother?”
the name’s golden, very golden! August 15, 2009
Posted by Mystic in lingo, people, social.7 comments
Contributing author Mystic writes about the wierd nicknames popular in Karachi.
as illustrated by the exalted xill-e-ilahi in “hush cat”, there is no lack of creativity and inventiveness when it comes to giving names to food and retail outlets. however, this does not end at that and not surprisingly, extends to people as well!
One of the earliest stories i’ve heard, came from my dad. sometime in the late seventies/early eighties, my dad went to one of the cinemas in khi with a friend of his who happened to be wearing a yellow cap. it seems like caps were not a norm in those days and while waiting in queue, they heard a shout from the back saying:
” arey peela topi defence hai re”
and so peela topi was born! (this also reminds us that the from defence and not from defence rivalry is nothing new!)
so anyway, i’ve come across a lot of weird nicks and this is a recollection of some of those and this by no means is an exhaustive list..
1. Spitface/Spitty/Spits: well i can relate to this one cuz well its kinda mine. reason? this female friend of mine who i had just met at the time, wouldn’t shut up and was going on and on and on and i just stuck my tongue out and went “pbbbbbttt”! and guess what? some spit came out and hence the name!
2. Archie: yup we have our very own archie in k-town. red hair, freckles, clumsiness personified, basically the works! the guys at archie comics would be lucky to have him as the lead role if they were to make a movie on the comic.
3. charya-in-chief: a name given to a friend of mine by our a’level accounts teacher! not very flattering ofcourse but appropriate given the fact that he wrote a big “YES!!!” at the end of his accounts exam as his balance sheet tallied!
4. rafhan jelly: dont ask me why but yes, there is a guy called rafhan jelly! basically used in the same sense as “lucy”!
5. mozay mozay: literally, socks socks! the guy’s real name: muzammail. so i guess i can understand how its been derived but mozay? and tht too twice? now try calling out to him. “mozay yaar baat toh sun!”
6.yeti: obviously for the guys height and size.
7. biscuit: don’t really know how this came about, but i find it damn funny! biscuit? would u believe it started off being cream biscuit?
8. bumboo: school elections, intikhabi nishan: a bomb..hence the not so flattering handle, bumboo! “kaisa hai bumboo?”
9. matka khan: this nick name, given by me, belongs to our very own, xill-e-ilahi! i think he can better explain 😛
10. golden: a name i heard two days ago and it sent me and xill in fits of laughter! we still haven’t figured out why he is called golden, but abbas tried calling him out saying “chal bhai golden” and trust me, it was something to be heard! and btw, this is the guy that threw a bowling ball back while trying to roll it forward!
11. goti seth: u’ve heard chotu, chotay and now u’ve got goti! one look at this guy and u’ll kno why. people actually play around with this guy.
12. kaju: khwaja turned kaju..there is a song dedicated to him too. “kaju mere kajuuu”!! lame i kno, but it works.
more to come and this is dedicated to peela topi for well, simply wearing a peela topi!
inglish cheetay July 28, 2009
Posted by Xill-e-Ilahi in lingo, people, social, urdu.21 comments
language is what defines a race. slang-uage is what defines the rat race.
my grandfather hopped on to a train heading home to lucknow from delhi. he was ten. he was also only the third person in the carriage; the other two being an elderly pair of lucknavi ladies busy gossiping about the people who had also attended the wedding they were returning from. this was as standard fare conversation back in 1909 as it is today in 2009. at some point in the journey a british lawyer also entered the carriage, noticeable only because his face was riddled with smallpox scars and was supposedly as ugly as it gets. the ladies gave him a scornful glance and one said, “ay hay, bajia, ye gora kambakht kitna badsoorat hai. kabhi pehlay aisa na dekha“. at this point, my granddad interjected, “kabhi kabhi sheerazion mein bhi phulka nikal aata hai“. the ladies looked at him and burst out laughing and asked him which part of lucknow he was from.
i assume you are as clueless as i was when i was told this tale of the deductive powers of the old ladies in guessing my grandfather’s city of origin. apparently it was the reference to the two species of pigeons (the sheerazis are a pure white breed and the phulka is a twin-coloured type, usually white with patches of black, gray or brown) that gave him away – pigeons being one of the four interests of highly succesful lucknavis (the others were kite flying, poetry and mujras).
38 years after this incident, partition happened.
and it so transpired that in the melting pot that is karachi came people who claimed to speak the same language but would debate for generations whether the right word for thread is taaga or dhaaga. the story is told of the lucknow wala karachiite and the delhi wala karachiite who were having a heated argument at a tea shop when a bihari stepped in to calm them down. the lucknow wala says to the bihari, “yaar tu hee faisla kar de. bulbul bolti hai ya bolta hai?“; to which the bihari responded “babwa, bulbul to bolay hai“. and not only did all these guys come in to karachi but – urdu, by and large, being the lingua franca – in the inclusivist spirit that only speakers of a language with as diversified roots as urdu could have; they kept on absorbing words from other cultures right into their dailyspeak.
today, the streets of karachi echo with the sounds of a language which ghalib or iqbal would never figure out. no poet worth mentioning has ever, to the best of my knowledge, had found occasion to refer to a good thing as lush. or set. or tight. or ing-lish. or oodham. or anth. or cheeti. or several other synonyms that come to mind. but this is what it has come to.
so 99 years after he had wowed two unknown old ladies with his pop culture references in a world still coloured sepia in my imagination of it; my granddad’s grandson found himself seated behind couple of teens in a hospital cafeteria at 3:30 am. they were discussing the two cute med students who had stepped in for a tea break.
“yaar, copy check kar”
“abay ye to sirf a plus hain, fine leg pe dekh – position holder khari hai.”
this of course was not impossible to grasp. virtually everyone in karachi can understand a reference to the examination system and to cricket. (for the record – i didn’t agree with the rating. she wasn’t bad but not a position holder by a long shot). later in the day, i was at the gas station waiting for the guy in front of me to get done with the air hose for his tyres but he was having some difficulty in deciphering the code that the puncture wala was using. admittedly, “aira vaal daddy leak hai” isn’t easy but the fact that the guy couldn’t figure out that he was being told that the valve was leaking came as something of an eye opener. apparently, there are people in karachi who haven’t mastered the local dialect and so it follows naturally that there are people in the rest of our pure motherland who think that karachiites are aliens (and not just in the “muhajir” sense of the word).
i have therefore compiled a short list of slang words here which i intend to increase with your contributions till it becomes urdu’s answer to urban dictionary. ok, maybe thats going too far. but you get the idea. for someone looking for a conventional urdu dictionary online there is a very cool thing on crulp if you know your urdu alphabet.
andhi: literally the feminine adjective for “blind”; the word is used to describe a situation of no accountability. you have effectively established an andhi if you do as you please with no concern for anyone else. e.g. andhi lagee huee hai na – hamid jaisa chumpoo bhi loot ker chala jaata hai.
bharam: i’m not sure if there is an english equivalent but the closest literal meaning would be “face” as in not willing to lose face etc. however, that is not how it is used on the street and in the ‘hood. here the word is more closely corresponding with “attitude”. as in hamid se baat karna bekaar hai, uske bharam khatam hee nahin hotay. the verb form is bharam maarna or bharam karana and the less commonly used superlative is nangay bharam.
chamaar: literally a leather worker, the word is used as an insult meaning imbecile or moron. e.g. hamid, yaar, tu bhi chamaar hai, pehlay nahin bata saktay they?
dhakkan: literally a top or lid, it is used almost exactly as the above term. e.g. hamid, yaar, tu sirf chamaar nahin hai. eik number ka dhakkan hai. pehlay nahin bata saktay they?
english or inglish: this refers to something cool. because something can only be cool or stylish if its imported from the former masters. e.g. hamid hai to dhakkan, magar kitting buhut english kerta hai.
gathering: almost what it means in english. it is used to mean your social circle. hamid ne buhut jaldee un donon ke sath gathering bana lee hai.
hagga: its kind of embarassing to know this – but, after all, we do come from a culture that spawned the inimitable chirkeen – but a hagga literally would be a turd. it is used to mean blunder. e.g. hamid ne bhi kya hagga maara, farzeen ko us ke bhai ke saamne line kara dee.
kuppee: desi moonshine. illegal, homemade brew. also known as tharra. hamid apni gathering ke sath pul ke neechay kuppee peeta hai.
line maarna or line karana: probably a distortion of some forgotten english colloquialism it means, quite simply, to flirt. eg. hamid roz st. joseph ke bahar khara ho ker bachiyon ko line maarta hai.
maimoona: a girlfriend. drawn from – as far as i can figure out – anwar maqsood and moeen akhter’s wisecracks about a memon guy’s wife almost always being called maimoona way back in the days of studio ponay teen. e.g. abay scene sun! hamid apni maimoona ko bike per juice pilanay laya tha aur wahan hum se takar gaya. ha ha ha!
this series will be continued some day. i will need your contributions, so please, please add them in your comments.
The rain on your parade 