Gotak

Driving to the gym yesterday evening, I happened to switch on the radio. Radio city 91.1. A song had just ended and I was cursing myself that I’d have to listen to their woresht ads. And then

Welcome to colloquial claaass brought to you by Miss Lingo Leela. SSLC poss currently unemplaayed.

Ever since it started way back in 2001, the best thing about radio city has been Miss Lingo Leela. One heavily accented woman takes lessons on “slonguague” or “slang language”. Every day she introduces a new word, and proceeds to explain it. Initially, the Lingo Leela act used to be done by RJ Priya Ganapathy. However, after she left, there was no one to do it and it was sadly discontinued.

Then sometime in 2003 or so, Radio City decided to standardize programs across locations, and flooded Bangalore with HT stuff. Hindi speaking RJs came in. All the English stuff went out. The best RJs left. Lack of competition was clearly showing. Anyways, by the time I started listening to radio again (about a year back), Radio City was back to its best. They had got in some good RJs (especially Vasanthi), localized the content, brought back the english stuff, even introduced some Kannada stuff. The ads were a little bad but it’s ok,. And then, a few months bak, Lingo Leela made a comeback. Yesterday, she continued.

Today’s word of the day is Gotak. This is a word used in infaarmal usage to signify death. It is like saying that someone croaked.

Gotak being a word that I use very often, I was thrilled. As I had explained earlier, there is no one single Kannada slang. It varies from household to household. And now the word of the day was something that is used a lot in our house. Such joy.

For exomple, if someone says “ivattu yaaro leader gotak andirabeku. adakke ivattu raja” it means “today some leader must have kicked the bucket. so it is a haliday”.

Now, this was too good to be true. I had used the exact sentence to explain the meaning of the word gotak to someone.

This word is the humble cantribution of Corthik Yuss from Byaangaloor. Tomorrow we will learn more. Let us join hands in this noble endeavor of slonguage improvement.

It then struck me. It all fit in. Long ago, when Lingo Leela first made her “appearance” (hearing rather), there was an email id that was given where we could send our cantributions. I must have sent this work to them ages back. At least 4-5 years ago. And it got played now! Such joy! Such joy! Ended up doing an extra 5 minutes on the treadmill yesterday!