Thursday, April 13, 2017

K is for kimkartavyavimoodh

Say what?!

If you didn't have Hindi as a subject in school, you might have never heard of the word किंकर्तव्यविमूढ. When our Hindi teacher broke the word to us, we were blown away. What a word. What length. What beauty. What randomness. What joblessness.

I think if you break it down, it goes something like किं = what, कर्तव्य = to doविमूढ = dunno. Basically it means "dunno what to do". This word has particular significance for many a bloggers during the taxing month of April, because there are some letters in the alphabet which you just don't know what to do with. 

After 'words that start with k' failed to turn up any satisfactory results, I turned to my own creative juices. Come on, guys. Give me something!

K for karaoke? Write about the Bollywood karaoke club that I have recently joined? (It's true. We get together, sing loudly and off-key, and hope that the security guards -- or worse, the police -- won't come-a-knocking.)

K for knock knock jokes? Xena has been introduced to the world of knock knock jokes by her classmates and because they totally don't get how these jokes work, people around her have to endure really really bad knock knock jokes that do not make any sense at all. Sample this:

Knock knock

Who's there?
Octo.
Octo who?
Octopus.
Huh?

K for kanjak? Every year, some of my neighbours organise kanjak puj where nine girls are worshipped as devis. We just attended four last week. We were literally puja-hopping. Xena even attended one in her swimsuit because the invitation was for 5 pm and her swim lesson was at 5.30 pm. I don't care much about pujas and stuff, but it's definitely a fun social event that I try not to miss. I also lug my DSLR along to capture shots of the girls in their pretty Indian gear. And then I go back and dig up kanjak photos from the previous years and get all senti about how much they have grown. And then I send these old photos to the ladies who hosted the pujas and get them all senti too. 

So yeah, these were some options, but none of them seemed worthy of a full blog post by themselves.

"Somebody help me with the letter K!" I pleaded to the in-laws and Xena at dinner the other day. I was really in a किंकर्तव्यविमूढ state. While the in-laws racked their brains, Xena looked at me with a startled expression -- as if I'd let her down in some way. 

"Mamaaaaaa!" She said. 

"Whaaaaaat???"

"You can just write K for Kentrosaurus!!" She said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

(I don't know anything about Kentrosaurus. I didn't even know such a dinosaur existed. I had to look up its spelling for this post.)

I looked at her face, earnestly looking up at me, totally expecting me to take up her Kentrosaurus suggestion. 

Oh my darling, darling daughter. What do I do with you? किंकर्तव्यविमूढ is what I am. 



5 comments:

Reef by any other name said...

And I google Kentrosaurus. Am I smarter than Xena-grader. Nope apparently not. She be smart!

Arun said...

K for Kisses (and hugs) for your daughter :). I mean, she threw you a life-line!

Maybe she can journal something about Kentrosaurus and then you can post it :) Better yet, anticipate some difficult letters and get Xena to suggest and journal something :) :) :)

Charan Deep Singh said...

Well K was difficult for me too. So i narrated an incident which happened at a K. Kipps Bakery.

hope you like it.

http://charandeepsblog.blogspot.in/2017/04/k-kipps-bakery.html

Arun said...

I am also thinking K for Kendriya Vidyalaya because kimkartavyavimoodhta was a word I learned there, and was my favorite too. One use was after I got four or five books from the library and couldn't decide which one to start with :)

Sayesha said...

Reef,
LOL! These dinosaur names, I tell you! I've not googled anything else as much as I've googled them! :P

Arun,
Thank you! Yes, she's the source of half of my posts and now she's guest-posting too hehehe! :P
She did describe a full paragraph's worth on the kentrosaurus when I asked her what to write about it. LOL!

Charan Deep,
Awww... what a sweet story! Ah puppy love! :)

Arun,
Oooh the 'ta' at the end makes it even more fascinating! :P