Pettkammi … God's Hammer ... (Tulu terms)

I am a Mangalorean and am rather proud and happy about that … Mangalore is the headquarters of the Dakshina Kannada district in Karnataka … most people are naturally trilingual here, speaking Tulu, Konkani, and Kannada with ease … I could speak in Tulu so long as I lived in Mangalore, but once I left the city, I couldn’t find Tulu speakers among my friends and lost my ability to speak the language … my father speaks fluent Tulu even now; that’s because he was born and brought up in Mangalore and lived there till his graduation and started his career there … my father’s brothers, my uncles, also speak Tulu fluently …

Though I can’t speak Tulu, I understand it well … and the words that come off the top of my head to describe the language are rooted, earthy, folksy, etc., but that would only be a small part of it and all people who love their languages would have the same thing to say about their languages … so, after we shifted from Trivandrum to Mangalore, I started to pick up Tulu slowly, but it took me some time to muster enough courage to speak with friends in Tulu … some terms and words would stump me and I could ask my father for explanations and meanings … and some of these have stayed with me after all these years … here is one – Pettkammi – people who would often behave in an eccentric and unexpected manner would be dismissed casually as “aaye pettkammi-mbe…”

‘Pettu’ means beat or beatings; and ‘kammi’ means ‘less’ … I asked my father if ‘pettkammi’ means ‘less beatings,’ why should someone who behaves in an eccentric manner or in an odd and peculiar manner be called ‘pettkammi?’ Does it mean that the person was allowed to be a wayward child and therefore has grown up to be like this? … My father explained the concept behind this … he said it has got nothing to do with a person not getting enough admonitory beatings as a child … and the concept is beautiful and hilarious … it is to with the concept of God as an ‘artisan,’ if you wish, one who creates human beings as metal statues first and breathes life into them … and sends them to earth, so to say … and God creates each statue with care, with all the tools – hammer, chisel, etc., and beats each statue into shape and perfection with his hammer … and sometimes God is distracted or disturbed or tense, just like any of us, and under such circumstances the statues don’t get enough attention and care and get ‘less beatings with the hammer’ or ‘not enough beatings with the hammer’ and turn out to be ‘less than perfect!!’ … and therefore, when life is breathed into them and they become human beings, they behave in eccentric, unexpected, peculiar, or strange ways … and hence, ‘Pettkammi’ …