Baardaan … Necessary Burden … (Tulu terms)

Among the more evocative Tulu terms that I came across was ‘Baardaan’ … this was again a term that I heard very frequently when I was in Mangalore … the term was used to refer to chaps who were utterly useless, but indispensable for some inexplicable reason … a sort of ‘necessary burden’ …  

I asked my father the actual meaning of this term … he then explained that boats and steamers, ships too, had to have a certain amount of weight to remain afloat in water and not wobble or topple … a sort of optimum weight, which involves some kind of physics related to ‘displacement’ and all that …  remember Archimedes and his eureka moment?  Yeah, exactly, that sort of thing … so, for the steamer or ship to have the optimum weight, it must have enough freight to carry, especially, if it is a cargo ship … sometimes there isn’t enough cargo to carry, but existing cargo must be transported, so, sand bags are dumped into the cargo hold to make up the required weight … these sand bags are only there to make up the required weight, and apart from that they don’t serve any purpose … but they are necessary, otherwise the steamer would wobble and topple … this burden has to be carried … it is a total loss to ferry these bags of sand, but you can’t do without them … so, these sand bags that are used to make up the requisite weight in a ship are called ‘BARDAAN,’ father said …  

As an aside, Bardaan might have some connection with Burden, you see … same consonant sounds … /b/ /d/ /n/ … maybe the word has Arabic or Persian origins … Mangalore has had trade links with Arabia for centuries before the Europeans came and screwed up everything … “White Man’s Burden” and that sort of thing … come to think of it, most of the Englishmen who were part of the Empire were just making up the numbers … ‘White Man’s A Burden’/‘Bardaan’ …

                                     

Whether ‘Bardaan’ is a Tulu word or not, I am not so sure … and I am not sure too if this term is used across languages in Dakshina Kannada, but it is part of Tulu language … and see, so much hidden behind a word … if only we care to look around …

(Those of you readers who are Tulu speakers or are from Dakshina Kannada … please do send me common words/terms of similar resonances to continue the thread … you could also write a whole post, and I would put them as ‘Guest Posts’ … )

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’ …