True Blue TULU (Huh!)

I have a confession to make…I speak TULU at home…there I said it…the cat , the mouse in the cat’s mouth and the flea on the cat’s fur are now all out of the bag. I repeat I speak Tulu…not ZULU…not JIGLOO (The non-existent language that the non-existent igloo land superheroes speak)

Now one may ask…okay you speak Tulu…so what big deal…but then someone always says “Hey…Remind me again…who else in the world speaks Tulu”...and that’s when the dilemma really starts and my cheeks turn a shade best described as “crimson red”…you know who speaks tulu…one Ms. Rai…the one and only BIG Bahu…the one who in recent times has been found constantly clinging to the BIG PAA, MAA and HA! (I knew the last clue would crack it open for you!)

Oh yea and the HA! here is certainly Abhishek Bachan…if you thought I hold him in contempt then you are definitely mistaken…I scorn at him only for being a flea bag always working for big banners and grinning stupidly when posing for a picture with the above mentioned Ms. Rai. From time to time he redeems himself by acting in a world beater movie like Dhai Akshar Prem Ke Guru!

Allright Allright I ramble!

Satanic Salm 1 (The P is non-existent!) : Thou shall not ramble…not even if your entire blog sounds like one big ramble!


What can be worse than being associated in the same clan as Ms. Rai…well…think hard…you are also immediately associated with a certain “Oh I love the queen though I am too thick to understand what she says” Ms. Shetty (Ouch!) or a certain “Can’t Act, Can’t Dance , Can’t Emote and Should not exist” Mr. Shetty (Very Ouch!).

The perils of being a TBT (true blue tulu! – heck if laugh my ass out can be LMAO then true blue tulu can be TBT) does not stop with the aforementioned references. Some of us have also been lucky enough to have some “good buddies” from that distant planet Venus who conveniently forget that we speak Tulu and not Zulu. This trend has been especially noted when the above mentioned buddy is about to introduce you to pretty people of the Venetian kind. Privileged “good buddies” who are sometimes referred to as wives, take the extra liberty of saying that in addition to speaking tulu you also belong to the Zulu tribe and some really privileged good buddies (Wives with a wicked sense of humor!) describe you as a sword brandishing, leaf wearing, Zulu swearing mass of dark skin living in the jungles of…er…we will come back to that in a while!

There’s also the standard question “Where are you guys originally from?” This question when asked has the astounding effect of raising the questioner’s eyebrows in suspicion and simultaneously wrinkling their nose as though there’s a bit of horse dung on their recently shaved/waxed moustaches. Of course the answer is very straight forward and the average TBT would either say Mumbai or Gelfu (said in a True Blue True Blue Tulu accent!). However the lesser mortal TBT’s like me have a real challenge answering that question considering that I spent all my formative years in Tamil Nadu. If I risk saying Tamil Nadu then I have to be prepared to be called a “Curd Rice eating pseudo intellectual Madrasi”. Some people may even assume my name is some paradoxical thing like Chatur Buddhulingam Iyer. So I quietly say “Bangalore” leaving it sufficiently vague!


And there are names…okay I admit I don’t have a name as complex as Venkatachalapathi Rastafarian Hingolipalli or even mildly difficult such as Tenzin Gyatso (The Dalai Lama’s real name in case you care!). However, a name that has a Shibaruraya attached to it cannot be dismissed as a petty pawn in the war to find the most difficult to pronounce Indian names. The distortions to my last name have ranged from the mildly disconcerting “Sbraya” to the heart-attack inducing “Shibabababa okay I give up”.


Alas…being a TBT can’t be a fun thing…and being a TBT married to the Really privileged good buddy is no mean feat. But hey there’s one really bright (Not yet gained the sheen of silver!) lining on this rather nebulous cloud…there are only about 2 million people in the whole wide world who speak my language…which means I can swear at a good 6.5 BN people and they won’t even know about it…take that you snooty “marle’s” who speak a more common, easy to understand, well documented language with infinitely more acceptance. Sigh…the travails of being a True Blue Tulu!

PS: I made up that bit about Jigloo…really!

PPS : The jungle that I talked about…Bangalore is what you need to look for…see I caught you napping and not paying attention!

PPPS: Before you get your “kill that plagiarist” swords out, I confess part of the Chatur Buddhulingam name was inspired from our very own Chatur Ramalingam!