Skip to main content

"Hindi" Means No

Makati City Sunrise
I was walking down the Paseo de Roxas when I heard the word "Hindi". I instantly turned my head to find a couple of Filipinos busy talking among themselves. We shared an awkward glance and then I was on my way to the hotel.

As soon as I was in the room I tried to search what could they be speaking about. A few people had warned me about safety in Philippines; so a part of my brain was concocting all sorts of undesirable theories. While the more saner part (not sure if it is the left or the right lobe) was trying to figure out this mystery.

So again Google came to my help. A couple of days back I had learned from a colleague of mine that Tagalog is the local language spoken in Philippines. I would side track a bit here, but when I landed at Nino Aquino International Airport, the taxi driver asked me two questions; first- was I from India? and second - whether I spoke Tagalog?

The answers are pretty obvious, but the creative part of my brain added first question to the second and assumed he meant Telugu! I'm not sure why I did that; perhaps the reason Philippines has a one million strong Indian population (quoting the cab driver here) and I had lived in Hyderabad where Telugu is spoken.

So my brain did some math and went on a strange path trying to figure out difference between Tagalog and Telugu! Coming back to my story; I did a search on 'Hindi' and found out that in Tagalog 'Hindi' means ''no'! So to the relief of the sane as well as the insane part of my brain I assume the guy on the street meant 'no' (or did he?). 

So I am just a few days into my Filipino adventure so keep reading for some more blathering from my ever curious mind! If you don't believe me check out the link here on 'Hindi'.

Disclaimer: The events described in this post have been dramatized a bit!
Labels:
Location: BSA Tower, 108 Legazpi Street, Makati City 1200, Philippines

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Scuba Diving 36 feet deep in Goa (Surreal but Nice!)

"Surreal but nice" that's what Hugh Grant's character managed to blurt out, mesmerized by the beauty of Julia Roberts (in the movie Notting Hill ). And this was the exact thought that was running in my mind as I was rising from a depth of over 35 feet under water in the Arabian Sea near Goa, India. I had just finished my first dive (rather second dive of my first dive) with grouper fish, tailor fish - and many more - knelt at the bottom of the ocean floor and touched a ship wreck that sunk more than sixty years ago! It was a surreal experience that has left me with a feeling of self-satisfaction as well as endless curiosity. The two feelings very rarely take a house together in my mind. Probably the last time they shacked up together was when I got an admit for my Master's from State University of New York . The feeling of gliding underwater among the fishes, water pressure trying to burst your ears drums, flying over huge boulders of rocks under sea; like an un...
23 comments
Read more
The debate on Times Now Summit 2022 between Salman Khurshid, Dr. Vikram Sampath, Sai Deepak, and Pavan K Varma showed how disconnected the left, right, and the middle are from each other.  We all know these 'luminaries',  as Rahul Shivshankar, Editorial Director & Editor-in-Chief  @TimesNow introduces them.  How left and right  do not apply to Indian political viewpoints  is a matter for another time, therefore pardon my use of the western paradigm of left and right for the rest of this blog post. Times Now Debate, 2022 We all know Sai Deepak through his YouTube debate with  Asaduddin Owaisi  (Sai Deepak in fact moderated the debate) a few years back. And since then he has authored a couple of books on the historical context that surrounded the drafting of the constitution of India between 1946 to 1950. His first book on India, that is Bharat forced us to rethink colonialism and introduced an entirely distinct scholarly way to look at middle-e...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is Vulgar Propaganda?

Nadav Lapid called the movie 'The Kashmir Files' a propaganda movie while making his comments at the International Film Festival of India 2022 held in Goa last month. I'm not going to talk about the resulting controversy and eventual apology by Mr. Lapid. He was not only disrespectful of the freedom of speech of director Vivek Agnihotri but conducted his jury duty unprofessionally by taking a political stance. I'm only interested in the accusation of propaganda that Mr. Lapid so casually hurled at 'The Kashmir Files'.  The Kashmir Files What is propaganda?  The best definition that I could find is available on a website called  https://disinformation-nation.org/how-propaganda-works/ where it defines propaganda as 'an agenda' to promote a specific cause or ideology to a 'targeted audience' and a 'massaged message' which may alter or omit the facts. Propaganda can take various forms of communication to propagate the agenda.  And especially...
Post a Comment
Read more