Of Fake Accents & Statuses

A GOAT A DAY KEEPS A MAYTE AWAY

Dear All,

I was reading the latest issue of GQ India and there was a wonderful article about Bollywood stars and their fake twangs.

The reason I am reminded of this article this morning is becoz of a colleague of mine who also seems to acquire some of the strangest accents ever so often. Now if you read correctly you will see that I wrote accents (plural).

This is because he can’t seem to decide what (or which) it will be every morning.

The malaise seems to have spread to his son too.

He called his father ‘baba’ initially which turned into ‘daddy’ and then into ‘papa’ and has now settled into a very nasal & French ‘pah-pah’ so much so that you can’t quite be sure if he is asking for his dad or having an asthma attack.

My colleague’s response to that of course varies depending on which colleague he last spoke to.

“Yo Son” if the colleague was American, “Yes Sonny Boy” if British & even a “Yea Me Lad” if Scottish (never mind that the colleagues themselves never speak like that to their children).

One of the small mercies is that we don’t have a more varied workforce.


Many of you must already be familiar with Salman Khan’s out-of-this-world accent. Last week his first cross-over film, Marigold was being shown on one of the channels here.

Starring with him is Ali Larter (of HEROES and the recent OBSESSED with Beyonce fame).

Being in English this film does not have subtitles but every time Salman speaks you actually strain to understand what he is saying and by the look on her face, Ms Larter seems to be equally perplexed too.

If you go back to my post on Saalam-E-Ishq when it released, you will find how Salman had managed to take a simple Rahul and turn it into Raoooooool.
The movie probably flopped because audiences could not make up their mind if Salman was Indian or Spanish.

Ronit Roy (the TV actor) who also happens to run one of the biggest celeb security agencies in Bombay speaks perfectly normal English.

Last month, however, when Naomi Campbell & Kylie visited India, he was one of the escorts and was overheard telling the paparazzi “Yo Getcha Oucha Ma Face”.

The vernacular reporters thought he was speaking English while the English reporters thought he was speaking Marathi.

It was worse with Kylie when he became her de-facto spokesperson and kept telling reporters “She’s tired Mayte, Move Out Of The Way Mayte, Thoda Rasta Do Mayte” and soo confused both the Paps and Kylie that she finally stepped in and said “It’s Okay Mate, I’ll deal with it”.

To which he replied almost immediately " Yes Ma'am Mayte"

So does a fake accent actually elevate your social standing or make you a laughing stock?

Think about it Mayte.

And before I go just one more thing about Facebook.

Many of my friends have their relationship status as “Complicated”

What IS that?

You can be Single, Married, Divorced, In A Relationship or Engaged.

Isn’t that choice enough? What’s Complicated?

As another of my outspoken friends said quite so eloquently (or not)

“The only way it can be complicated is if you are Fucking a Goat”

Till next time.

Ciao

Vish