The Accent Effect

I remember this conversation as of three years ago. And it still makes me grin.

My 14 year old cousin had come down from the States fully equipped with halter tops and a strong East coast accent which was often difficult for even her family to interpret. For us lower mortals, it was virtually a lost case. For quite a while, I got by with sign language after which I began to recognize the sounds.(the words were still tough.) My grandmother had given up on talking to her and used my aunt as translator. Gotta admire my cousin's determination though. Not once through the whole month did we understand a sentence at the first trial.

My grandmother's house, where my relatives were staying, is in the same apartment complex as mine. And we had a parallel line telephone system between Patti's house. That was when BSNL lines took four months to turn into anything more concrete than an empty promise. Patti didn't get too many phone calls (didnt. Now she networks much better than I do. But I digress.) so we drew an extra line from one of the two landlines at home and connected it to a phone there. So what often happened was phone calls for me/sister/father at that number used to get picked up at Patti's and had to be transferred back here- or if we picked it up here as well, the line had to kept down there, blah blah. Following is an excerpt of one such instance.

Note: The following conversation is to be read with appropriate tamil and East coast accents.

Three rings. I leave the sofa to get it, before which the rings stop- indicating the line was picked up at Patti's. I pick up.

Cousin: Hel-ll-oh.
Innocent caller: Yallo? Yallo?
Cousin: Hell-ooh?
I.C: Yallo? Yallo? Yallo?
Cousin: Hey, who IS this? Hell-oh!!?
Prabha: *muffled laughter*
I.C: Yallo? Ramakrishnan aiyya veeda? Yallo?
Cousin: Who's that? Who's Ayya? Mo-oom, do you know any Rama Ayya? * Rama Ayya- rahma ah-yah
I.C: Yallo ma? Enna ma neenga? Naan plumber peysaren! Yallo! Yallo! Ramakrishnan sir irukkangala?
Cousin: No, mo-om, some guy got the wrong number, he's asking for a Rama Ayya. Hey, you got the wrong number.
Plumber: Enna wrong number aa? Enna ma solligara? (Woman, what the hell are you saying?) Yallo medam eez Ramakrishnan saar?
Cousin: Hell-ooh?
Plumber: Yallo? Yello? Yallo-yello?
Prabha: Hello? Hello? (I couldn't resist gatecrashing the Hello party.)
Cousin: Hell-ooh?
Prabha: Hello? Hello?
Plumber: Yallo? Yullo?

And on that lovely note the plumber slammed the phone down.

The only one in the family who wasn't too happy about the relation of the tale was Papa. :-( He lost a good plumber.
And yes, we disconnected the parallel line system and got Patti a separate line. Which is now always busy, I must add.