Peace and harmony

Selamat Detang! Welcome to this beautiful land of polite people. You can yell, scream and wave your arms and all you’ll be greeted with is a warm smile and a mystified look. Pratap did try to raise his voice and look tough while behind the wheel - but gave up when all he achieved was high blood pressure and a quizzical, concerned and sympathetic look from a passer by!

My new maid is an angel. We can’t have a disagreement because we can’t understand each other. I was horrified when I learnt that her name was ‘Tantrum’ – but breathed a sigh of relief when I learnt that ‘tantrum’ meant peace and harmony in Bahasa, the Indonesian language. There is undoubtedly immense peace and harmony in the house since she arrived as neither of us speak and there’s very little communication!

Tantrum Tuti is a thirty five year old who has been to school and knows the English alphabets as the script for Bahasa is the same. Tantrum came up with a brilliant idea. (it must be a done thing – as it explains the existence of a white board in the house!) Our daily chores revolve around a white board. With friends we’ve managed to get down some key words and the pointer plays its role as the interpreter. Added advantage is that I am beginning to lose weight – have to keep running to the white board every few minutes – agile out of compulsion and exhausted in the bargain!

Drawing on the white board did not work. You need to be highly skilled to be able to draw a jackfruit that does not remotely resemble a durian. (God!) I could barely make an egg look different from a potato. So would end up having boiled potatoes for breakfast instead of a boiled egg and mashed boiled eggs with chicken roast! The new system is working just fine. Potatoes are called ‘kentangs’. Will learn what eggs are called in due course of time.

"What’s the name of this road?" I asked Tantrum on one of our familiarization trips to the market. “Namma road?” I said pointing to the road. “Aaahh!” she said brightening up (which is a rare sight)– “Street.” “The phone is engaged,” I told her on another occasion… “In Bahasa (we say) – phone bizee,” she informed. ‘Choochee’ is an important word for it means to wash. Choochee bagu means wash the clothes; choochee peering means wash the dishes; choochee kamarmandi means wash the toilet; choochee wartel means wash the carrots! I find myself ‘choochee-ing’ all day!

You’d be surprised to know that Tantrum makes terrific ‘dal’. We’ve mastered words like Bubuk kunyit (turmeric powder), goreng (fry), jinten (jeera), bawang bombay (onions), garm (salt) and I can imitate extremely well the whistle of the pressure cooker to indicate how many whistles it will take for different dals to cook. It might take Tantrum quite a while to learn to make rotis – haven’t figured out how to say “ put equal pressure on the dough with both your hands” in Bahasa. We will learn. Slowly slowly catchy monkey – or should I say ‘slowly slowly catchy Tantrum!’

Long live peace and harmony… and sanity!