Check it out, fatt fatt

Pics Courtesy/@thehouseofjevaylaye

If there's one community that has claimed their brand of spoken English, it's the East Indians. It's a bizarre mix of Indian English, some Marathi and Bambaiya Hindi, says Natasha Almeida, co-founder of East Indian spice and recipe curation platform, @jevayla_ye. "Have you ever heard us speaking full sentences? We happily chuck words and add preferred suffixes with varying intonations to actuate different meanings. So, it's never turning/switching off the fan. It's always, ‘Put it out, ya'," she relates. Like author Ivan Arthur mentions in his foreword to A Village Dies, bugger can be an inclusive noun in the East Indian lexicon. From man, a lazy good-for-nothing to a villain, "dutty buggar" can mean anything.

Natasha Almeida

And now, @_thehouseofjevaylaye_store is bringing together such semantic ingenuity in cool daily-use totes. While it's about toting around a slice of home, Almeida shares that the inspiration was also in attracting a young audience that might not be instinctively interested in their recipes and bottle masalas. "Sometimes, a big batch of spice mixes and pickles sell out within a few days. With weather and labour constraints in mind, producing a new batch takes time. These environment-friendly totes will help us engage with our clients during such intervals." Their white bags read Susegad, What Men Bugger, Fug Yeah, Don't Pakao Ya and the all-time favourite call of hope, Sukhala. Almeida shares they are currently working on a seafood edition of these bags. We say, maste, bare.

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