Lost in Translation

Translations are a dicey business. You never know what can happen when something is taken literally without using the 'little grey cells' inside all those millions of heads. Over the past few days I've noticed a few examples but one stands out unequivocally. A few days ago, I had finally decided to eat at my college cafeteria, albeit only for breakfast. The humble idli was my choice and just as I was about to take my plate away to enjoy my first experience of cafeteria food, the server asks me, "Saar, do you want gunpowder?" My mind went blank as I just stared at his face for a few minutes. For those of you who do not know, I study in an institution where even the mere mention of war elicits a visit to the closest Father for a 'serious talk'. And since when have explosives been a side-dish for breakfast, except for Wiley .E. Coyote?? But I was in an adventurous mood that day so I just nodded expecting a load of black powder to be dumped on my plate and maybe even a complementary gun to boot. What I didn't expect was a coarse, brown pile of powder with enough oil to stop your heart just being slopped on to my plate. It was then I realise that 'gunpowder' was actually chutney powder. Now, who's brilliant idea was it to go call something so simple a weapon of mass destruction? It isn't even that spicy, for God's sake!! Then there's jaggery. Alright, I admit this story could just be me being the absent-minded boy I am, but it does illustrate how translation can deny people of really nice things. When I was 6, I had just found out about jaggery and wasn't too familiar with English. So I went and asked my grandmom what jaggery was in English. My grandmom was slightly confused how to explain how jaggery and molasses are related, so she just told me something in Tamil that translated to 'brown sugar'. Now, I blame the next part on TV. During this time, my family and I watched this serial where this little boy was drugged using 'brown sugar', the drug. Unfortunately, to my infantile mind, I understood this as jaggery and since then feared the sticky sweet till I was 16,  when I finally realised that jaggery and brown sugar just aren't the same. I had wasted 10 years, a whole decade of my life running away from jaggery, all because of my grandmom's inability to explain its meaning. (P.S. I don't blame her at all) Of course this is coming from the kid who wrote 'My father in a wood-cutter' when asked to make a sentence with the word 'wood-cutter'. I still argue that that was a brilliant sentence and really does make sense, despite what my parents say. But that was a long time ago. All I'll end in saying is, be careful what you translate, you don't want your hands to go pluck mangoes!! (I'll leave you to figure out where I got that from. If you're a Malayali, directly translate it into Malayalam. If you're not.......get someone to do it for you! ;)

Çiao!

Bio Lab Diaries

The Bio Lab and I share a very intimate relationship; so intimate in fact that I keep getting thrown out after 10 mins inside it every single time. The teacher fears my entry and the Lab assistants keep the door open for me. Lets start with my 10th standard. The scene is my final Bio practical exam. By some evil idea of God's or Fate's, my practical exams always tend to before lunch. I had an experiment where I had to check how the absorption of water differed in raisins in different liquids. I was really hungry so I quickly finished the experiment and ate the raisins. The teacher comes around saying that she needs to check my results and I tell her I've eaten the raisins. She looks at me like I'm some freak of nature and I break into frantic persuations. I convince her to give me my marks but she warns me not to this in an exam ever again.
Circa 2010. In my 12th standard Bio Lab. We had a Botany class and had to identify the different infloresences (the type of flower from which) of many fruits. I enter the Lab and there before me are an array of different fruits, all cut in half!! I freaked out and went straight to the teacher and asked her if I could eat some of the specimens. This being one of the first few classes, she didn't know me too well and thought I was joking and said fine. An hour later, as the class is leaving she screams that the fruits have been eaten. I, being a very honest (ahem ahem!!) boy, said I ate them. She comes up to me and with fire from her nostrils asks me how and why I did it. To this question I gave her a simple answer,"Ma'am, I asked you if I could and you said it was fine." The teacher was dumbfounded. She just stared at me and asked me if I was real. I just said it was what I did and walked off. Another day, we had to make thin sections of the given plant stem and show it to her. Once again being before lunch, I ate the stem given and found to my delight, it tasted like beans. I went through 3 or 4 pieces before she became curious and asked me how come I wasn't getting it. I said that I had already finished my work and was eating the rest of the specimen. She once again stared at me with a half- angry, half-extremely amused expression. I just told her that I was hungry. She pleaded with me not to actually do this in the exam. Now, I've always had a problem following orders. So the exam didn't go too well for me. I showed up as usual to the lab and found that I had an apple for my infloresence question. The invigilator was very attentive so I couldn't actually eat the slice in fron to of her, but I couldn't resist! I took a bite and she must have heard the crunch. She pounced on me and yelled at me for eating the specimen, asking how the rest of the people would identify it. She warned me she would give me a zero iof I did it again. So I diligenbtly finished my work and waited until everyone was done. Before I left, I asked her,"Maám, now that the exam is over, can I eat the rest of the apple?". The look she gave me said it all so I quitely left the place.
Í am now an Arts student so no more labs. But I still wish I could go back to my old lab one more time. The fruits are calling me....   ;)

Çiao!!