What you are saying, bhai?

Between euphony and cacophony, the Mumbaikar produces such a babel of sounds that it’s a bleeding miracle, if you ask me, that anything gets done at all in fair Mumbai

There were a few snakes in the hole.

If this seems an unusual way to begin this column today, consider what a weird way it is to end a birthday party. Yet I know for a fact that the hole is indeed where the average Gujarati child having a heppy birthday finally ends up towards the close of the evening — in the din-ing hole munching snakes and sipping a fizzy lime.

It could be, and was, worse. Earlier, the father had been rigorously raping a dole, one of those imported from the decadent but dazzling west. It was called a Barbie Dole, and as he super-vised, it was ruthlessly raped in pretty cotton-candy pink raping paper.

No matter how long I’ve lived in Mumbai, I cannot claim that its tongues are mine, but I have eavesdropped enough at 5-star cocktail parties and suburban train conversations to know that between euphony and cacophony, the Mumbaikar produces such a Babel of sounds that it is a marvel anyone understands any of it.

It’s a bleeding miracle, if you ask me, that anything gets done at all.

Take the Marathi phrase gheoon taak. For decades, perhaps more, I have been hearing gheoon taak and today I am completely its captive. I often mutter it to myself as I walk from Kala Ghoda to Pandit Paluskar Marg. Gheoon taak, gheoon taak, gheoonta gheoonta gheoontaak, I re-peat, and my feet march to its cadence. I soon feel like an advancing Allied army.

What do you suppose gheoon taak, barked in an authoritative way, might mean? Gaaawn, take it! perhaps, in a local transliteration of Gloucestershire English? Since no one has any theories, here is mine: it is the sound of the wheels of Mumbai’s local trains at high speed.

Moving at an equally terrifying speed is the realm of popular music. There was a reassuring time when one could say ‘music’ and be certain that definitions were shared between speaker and speakee. Today all bets are off. It is de rigeur to specify the genre of music that is on your mind — and there seem to be at least three of them looming large over Mumbai.

There is the category simply named pope music — characterised not so much by pontifical airs as by its barbecued sentiments. In second place is something seemingly more specific but actually vaguer than ever — the dreaded hip-hope music. Hip-hope has taken over dandiya, making that instantly state-of-the-art, and invaded taxis, barbershops and every mall worth its name. Today it is casting its eyes in the direction of Udipi restaurants, where we may soon expect the emergence of the hip-hope dosa.

Then—dare I say it?—there is rape music. I don’t claim to understand it though my chil-dren do. But you don’t have to be a genius to figure out what it is — it’s the song released in a hurry before they had added music to it, and inflicted on vulnerable folks without informed consent.

What about …mane joey che? If you are sharp, you will hear it often enough all over the place. I myself heard it for the first time as a child on 7 September 1979 at about 11 am from a maniben in the ration queue. I immediately wanted to know who Joey was? The new kid on the block, perhaps? Joseph abbreviated to Joey? But what was it to the lady in the ration queue? Was she Joey? To this day no one has been able to tell me who Joey is, and why, after several decades, he is still part of a question.

There is also the terrifying word phakt. I first met it — discreetly, I promise — at an advertising agency that sold a washing powder that rhymed with ‘turf’. Let us assume it was called Surf. The copy went ‘Sirf Surf’, implying that only Surf would do.

The Marathi translation was ‘Phakt Surf’ — a lucid instruction which, if misheard but meticulously adhered to, would have led to the product taking a phlying phakt right out of the consumer’s mind. In Mumbai, everything, it seems, is phakt.

Sooner or later, you come up against the question of commerce, especially in the country’s commercial capital. Commodities are bought, payments have to be made — and if you do not have a satisfactory job, then sometimes you find yourself caught a little short. But Mumbai’s shopkeeper is nothing if not kind at heart. “Ghabrata kai ko?” the friendly Rodrigues asked me at the provision store. 

“Saman le jao abhi, paisa peeche se dene ka hai.”

This was the first time that I was alerted to this facet of Mumbai’s money:  Where does the money come from? Taken seriously, it is a question of almost metaphysical implications. Oopar se? Bahar se? Pocket se? Crypto se? Bank se?

None of the above. Peeche is where commerce begins and ends in Mumbai.

You can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.

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