Mind Your Language & a Glossary

Mumbai is truly the melting pot of many cultures and languages. When Mumbaites speak Hindi, it may not necessarily be understood in Hindi-speaking states. That’s because Mumbai’s Hindi has borrowed quite heavily from Marathi and Gujarati languages. For instance, onion is known as pyaaz in Hindi but in Mumbaiyya Hindi it is known as kaanda which is actually a Marathi word. Similarly, aloo is called as batata and matar is called as wataana. Last year, when checking out vegetables in preparation for Onam, I was at pains to explain the vegetables I needed for aviyal and erisseri to the colony vegetable seller. Eventually, I went to INA Market, the haunt of Mallu nurses from the neighboring AIIMS and Safdarjung hospitals, for all those “odd & different” vegetables we use in our curries. Now, a visit to a South Indian store - Rama Stores and the INA Market is a much needed feature just before Onam and Vishu for that essential stock up.

We seem to be the only un-Northernized South Indian family in our area. A week after I first checked with the vegetable vendor, he turned up at my door with a bunch of plantains (not nendrakaaya) saying that he knew that we “Madrasis” use this vegetable. The minute the door closed, my husband and I couldn’t help laughing aloud. We were sure this vendor was thinking – what kind of people we were who never bought anything that he was selling, but who asked for stuff he never carried. We used to ask him for raw plantains, white gourd, pumpkin, drumsticks, and most of all - curry leaves. Getting curry leaves, an absolute staple of south Indian cooking, was a trying experience in Delhi. It took us a few months to settle down on a strategy to source curry leaves. Some of our neighbors had the curry leaf plant in their houses - I wonder why because they never used it in their cooking. We used to ask our maids to stealthily flick a few shoots of curry leaves for us, especially when it was dark. Our vegetable seller too did that for us a few times. That these could get caught in the stealing act made us anxious. Neither of us could muster the courage of doing it ourselves. Realizing the stress building on us, we decided to make it a last resort kind of option; we opted to get our dear curry leaves from Bangalore and Mumbai. So, whenever my husband travelled to Bangalore, he would get a bunch from Thoms Bakery, right opposite to his company guest house in Frazer town. Often it used to get scrutinized at the airport security check. From Mumbai, my mother carefully broke off sprigs from the plant in the society garden, packaged it nicely like a bouquet, and packed it into my husband's bag. I then wiped it with a dry cloth and packed it tightly in a plastic bag and stored in the refrigerator and it lasted weeks together till the next trip came up. 

Over the period we discovered that some of these vegetables that we yearned for was available seasonally at some places. These vegetables fell in between the two extremes- the staple Northie vegetables (like aloo, matar, gobhi, gajar, mooli, etc.) on one end and specialty vegetables (like mushrooms, broccoli, baby corn, red & yellow bell peppers, spring onions, etc.) at the other end.  The former was available everywhere, the latter was available at all upscale markets, but the middle was the problem. In business terms, it neither had the popularity nor the business potential in an area like ours. Discovering some of these vegetables gave us serendipitous joy; buying them was an educative experience. These vegetables were called by names we had never heard of and the word we had defiantly assumed to be the Hindi names were so different here. Like eggplant and brinjal or okra and lady fingers.  

To transfer the learning and for fun, I thought of putting together this glossary of vegetable names across four languages.

English	Hindi	Mumbaiyya	Malayalam
Onion	Pyaaz	Kaanda	Savalla ulli
Potato	Aloo	Batata	Urllakizhangu
Yam / Elephant’s Foot	Jimikhand	Suran	Chenna
Red Pumpkin	Sitaphal	Bhopla	Mathanga
Ash Gourd / White Pumpkin	Petha	Safed Bhopla	Kumbalanga
Drumstick	I continue pointing to it than ask the name	Shengha	Muringakaay
Ivy Gourd	Tindora / Kundru	Tendli	Kovakai
Snake Gourd	Chichingaa	Padval	Padvalanga
Sweet Potato	Shakkarkand	Ratallu	Mathirakizhangu
Long Yard Beans	Lobia	Chawli	Payar / Achingya
Bottle Gourd	Lauki / Ghia	Dudhi	Churaka
Beetroot	Chhakundar / Beet	Beet
Black eyed peas	Lobia	Chawli	Vellutha payar
Sugar	Cheeni	Shakkar	Panjasaara / Pansaara

Life is a learning process and so is this list, I will keep updating it as I know more and better.