Bangla Bond

A generation of Bengali diaspora now has their progenies growing outside the state. My son is one such teenager, educated and groomed outside Kolkata, West Bengal. Mother (and father) tongue forged its way into his life in its subdued glory and depth. Though he communicates fluently, we often fail to get his point, mostly due to abysmal collocations and connotations. A tangle of English thoughts and Bangla words ends up in quirks that are either riddles for us to solve or idiosyncrasies to laugh at!

How confounding is it? He discovers one day that the maths teacher at his school also coaches students at a tuition college, Matrix, that he attends and says with eyes full of wonder and excitement, 'Mamma, amader maths teacher Matrix e peye galo.' (Our maths teacher got into Matrix.)

'Really! How wonderful, isn't it? When did he join?' That's an obvious follow-up question.

He tried to explain further and the more he tried, the more befuddled we got in his labyrinthine explanations. After a few more exchanges of thoughts and moans of disgust the cloud cleared. The teacher has been working in both the places for quite sometime, but he got to know of it just then! He could've said, 'Mamma, amader Maths teacher Matrix eo porhay.' (Our Maths teacher also teaches at Matrix.) And none of the discussions would've ever happened!

Then there are these innate oddities, now incorrigible, and which we intentionally don't point out anymore only to enjoy a secret laugh between us. 

Piano khelbo (keep using it till we find an English expression for bajabo)

Amay dao na (don't give me; not the usual way of snagging)

Mango bhalo gondho chaiyeche to (a drop of Hindi)

Bichana baniye diyechi (I've made the bed; makes me rethink why in the world I say bichana jherhechi!)

Jol berhe dao (as if it's rice)

Bhat dhele dao (Well, you pour liquid that's for sure! Solids can be placed, kept, given, heaped, and much more)

Purho purho gondho berochhe

And his grandparents are purono lok (elderly people)

Sab jobab kore eshechi (have answered all the questions)

Tom Holland aar Chris Pratt er gola diye banano Onwards (Makes me wonder how to express this in my mother tongue - they lent their voice to the animated characters in Onwards movie)

Ami heater e heat khachhi (sure, why not, if we Bengalis can eat water and cigarette, we can definitely eat some heat)

Door ke nebe? (I have to accept that; we sometimes 'give the door', don't we, with 'đorja ta điye đe to')

Dish ke korbe? (On a second thought he did come up with 'dish ke majbe', but expecting 'Bason ke majbe' would be too much of an ask)

Little wonder he interpreted 'schools broke for summer holidays' to 'school bhenge galo'!

He is a bit rough around the edges, but manages well. Even Gopal Bharh with all his witty ways couldn't have figured out what language he is more comfortable in. In his dazed state at the dead of night he sometimes implores, 'baba jol debe,' (not mama as he knows who'd oblige). But if he falls from the mattress he'd be like 'Weigh wha! Wha jus'happened'. While recounting he uses 'I ca pu a finger onee righ now' as deftly as 'amar bhalo habe to mamma' in consternation before a combat, read Maths test.

On the counting side, of late, he has mastered the skill of coming up with a number in English from Bengali number names. He's getting quite good at it! In fact so good that even when I mispronounced chappanno as chianno, his logic worked (cho as in 6 and a trailing onno as in fifties) and bingo, it's 56!

His handwriting is neat, legible, not far from impeccable but the twist is he doesn't have a clue of what he's writing. Following my instructions is all he does: a triangle and another with a dot (bor) dangling from a straight line, the reverse of it (rob), and now with a curl on the right (bok), draw it on the top (bodh). After all that he says, 'Rob is swindling, right?'; someone help me with the English of 'ulubon e mukto chorhano'.

Of course I gave up after sometime, furiously frustrated. All that painstaking effort to carry forward the Bangla-baton proudly didn't really substantiate. Every time we started with a triangle, proceeded to zig-zags (jaw, yaw, one of the shaws and imagine we have three of them - cringe) we ended up aggravated, in querulous cries and squabbles. The curves and loops of maw, law, shaw seemed a distant destination. The digraphs and trigraphs are challenges I didn't dare to plough through. That the vowels don't simply sit between consonants is beyond his comprehension. Why in the world they change to some symbols? Why indeed! So all of that remained as alien as the Japanese script to him (almost hieroglyphics)!

Let the quirks be. I'm glad he speaks and understands our tongue, albeit not in its full splendour. But does it really matter that I understand as much of Shakespeare as he does Rabindranath? I believe our little Bangla Bond is priceless as we can comfortably communicate, empathise, and indulge in each other's exuberance - an invaluable key 🔑 to our camaraderie! I'm not one who can't see the wood for the trees😀!

Dona, Sydney, May 2021