Speaking Malayalam-Nursing a Job

Caught speaking Malayalam, Apollo nurses asked to resign. IE, May 26

The news report dealt with how two nurses were asked to resign when they were overheard speaking to each other in their native tongue, Malayalam. It is perfectly common for people belonging to the same community or region to break into their familiar lingo, especially in a different world. It not only gives them a sense of identity but also a collective anonymity, bordering on superiority, as others around them gape at them blankly. This need not always turn into loss of a job unless you are working for Apollo. My senior R. narrated two experiences, which were quite to the contrary.

R. had a deft hand and drew cartoons with a felicity envied by many. His favourite pastime was to ask small children to draw any line and he would turn it into a figure of their choice. S his fame spread, All India Radio hired his services to illustrate Akashvani, its official journal. He rid its contents of drabness over a period of time. As he entered its office on Delhi’s prime location, Parliament Street, to collect a cheque for the services rendered, he found himself facing a lady from his home State, Kerala. I must add here that R. had grown long hair, which were quite a rage then, and spoke chaste Hindi. His features too did not betray his roots and he was often mistaken to be from the Hindi heartland.

The lady was quite justified when she said to him, ‘Kahiye?’

‘Ji, mujhe apna cheque lena hai’, Rajan explained.

He was offered a seat and asked to wait after he had provided relevant information. Then dropped the bombshell. The lady pretended to be absorbed in work, switched to Malayalam and called out the name of a colleague seated in the same room and said to her, ‘Have you seen this joker sitting before me?’

Rajan got a jolt but composed himself and kept looking around blankly.

‘Why? What is special about him”, the other lady enquired.

‘Jesus! Look at his hair. And he must be thinking he is looking very smart”

“Why is he here?”

‘For money. But he should be given scissors in lieu of that!’

Thankfully the cheque arrived by then and Rajan signed a register to get it. Having collected it, he turned to the lady smilingly and asked in chaste Hindi, ‘Aap ko mere baal pasand nahin aaye?

The other incident was quite hilarious. On a visit to a ward in Willington Hospital in New Delhi, he discovered that the patient he was looking for was not to be found on the allotted bed. A little concerned, he rushed to the nursing station where the petite Malayali girl was on the intercom. ‘Ek minute’, she said to which Rajan responded with a nod. And then she went on uttering choicest obscenities in Malayalam, which brought beads of perspiration on R.’s forehead in winter. When she hung up after what seemed to be eternity and asked my friend, ‘Bolo’, Rajan asked gleefully about the missing patient but in Malayalam. The nurse turned pale, vanished from the scene and sent someone else to answer the query.

Better than losing a job, anyway!