h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Rapinder Slips into Tongues...
by Daljit Nagra

Dad and me were watching the video--
Amar, Akbar, Anthony. It's about three
brothers separated after the family is parted
by gangsters. You can get it with subtitles, Miss.
When Anthony, who grows up in a Catholic home,
begged Christ for the address of his real parents
then crossed himself, I jumped off our royal red
sofa, joined Anthony with his prayer:
Hail Mary, Hail Mary, Hail Mary,
four-quartering myself then curtseying a little.

Dad just stared at me, knocking his turban side
to side that I almost thought it would come off
which it normally does when he's doing his press-ups
and his face goes mauve. Instead he took off
his flip-flop (the one with a broken thong),
held it in the air, shouting in 'our' language,
Vat idio! If you vant to call on Gud,
call anytime on anyvun of our ten gurus,
Do you tink is white Gud's wife your mudder?

Dad's got a seriously funny way Miss,
sometimes he cries, and says he's going to give me
to a Sikh school, a proper school. That's why
I did what my cousin Ashok does at our local
temple -- while you were all doing hail mary
to end registration, I first locked my hands,
knelt down, prayed with this ditty we do on Sundays,

imagined the Golden Temple and our bearded gods
to your up-on-the-cross one, then roared:
Wahay Guru!
Wahay Guru!
Wahay Guru!
Like that.




['our' language = Punglish]

Sorry Jabs but you’ve lost me here, call me a poetic heathen but this does not float my boat, I might be a tad uncultured at times but I will always be honest,

Thanks for your comment, WNs. I have just found this poet and for me he is a real discovery, and brilliantly funny too. Just shows how different reactions can be. Your reaction is of course not invalidated at all by mine.

I didn't intend this to be a thread, but it's nice to have your response.

Anyone else - feel free to post or not to post, as you wish, with my blessing!



Jabs.

Another tale of a religious polyglot, a novel, titled "Life of Pi", by Yann Martel.

Its about a hindu boy lost at sea aboard a small lifeboat with only a Bengal tiger for company.

Harvest Books, 2001

Excellent Jabs.

I like it..and its interesting that its more like prose presented as a sort of poem..its an overlap, and it's good to get art stuff from other cultures and outlooks.

The end made me laugh out loud!

Very good! I grew up in the middle of one of the largest Sikh communities in Britain and there is a large community in my town.

When i was a small child,i was a guest in a Sikh mans house, i played with his son; on asking who the pictures of bearded men on the walls were he told me, "thats God, and thats God and thats God..." very confusing ( this was a time that every man with a beard i called Jesus, or asked my parents 'is "that" Jesus?' lol. This boy was so proud, 'we only had "one" God" lol.

Thanks Jabs

In my early twenties, I took a course in kundalini yoga from members of the local Sikh community, the school of yoga I'd most strongly recommend for martial arts students and acrobats.

They'll have you doing breathing exercises at the end of the six week introductory course that are so strenuous, they'll knock the uninitiated unconscious.

The quality of these contributions is outstanding. Interesting stuff - thanks.

Jabs.

Jabs love reading the quirky style of poetry and it's cross cultural references.

Just to give you some feed back Jabs, after my comments in post 2, I did actually look up some poetry from foreign shores.
Indian poetry seems so much to reflect there immediacy to life, still doesn’t float my boat but your thread provoked me to experience something new and that cant be too bad eh.

well, i loved it, J - a sort of mini "East meets West" in verse!

i can just hear some friends from the Indian sub-continent regions pronouncing the word "ditty"

a nice word-picture of an Asian child reporting back to teacher, in class, an episode from their weekend


PS - unusual to find such a cultured Jabberwok thanks for broadening our horizons!

Just a footnote. "Wahay Guru" means, apparently, "Blessed be the Gurus". Any resemblance to E. Morecambe is coincidental.