Dekhlem moddem, aylem roddnnem

Dekhlem is the past definite of dekhonk which is a transtive verb meaning to see. Most verbs ending in onk are intransitive, like bosonk,(to sit), cholonk (to walk), and khellonk (to play), but dekhonk is one rare exception of a transitive verb ending in onk. As such, were the sentence to have a subject, that subject would have taken the instrumental case like hanvem (dekhlem) as do the subjects of other transtive verbs in the past definite tense.

Notice, too, that, even though the subject of the sentence may have gone awandering, the instrumentality of the missing subject nevertheless pervades the scene, with the result that the verb now agrees in gender and number with its object instead: As moddem is neuter in gender, the verb too takes the neuter form: dekhlem. Finally, to complete the parallelity between the two arms of the proverb, since moddem, in the first part, is a noun, the second part of the sentence also goes for the noun form of the verb cry, i.e. roddnnem, much like the word crying used in a popular Christmas carol: “No crying he makes.”

Another peculiarity to be noticed here is that the both the arms of the proverb begin with the verb. Now, that isn’t the way Konkani sentences are usually structured, since the common practice is to place the verb at the tail-end of a sentence. When you, for a change, start a sentence with the verb, instead of ending with it, you in effect give the sentence a special flavour, rendering it poetic or oratorical.

So much for the language aspect of the proverb. Now a word on its message.

Living in a complex world that we do, our minds are preoccupied with myriad things, so that certain (desirable) behaviours are generally evoked, often automatically, only by direct stimuli. One such situation has been captured by our proverb.

It is interesting that the English proverb, Out of sight, out of mind, purports to convey a very similar message, but by portraying exactly a contrary situation. It is tantamount (though not logically equivalent) to giving our proverb a new makeover: “If one doesn’t see a dead body, one doesn’t cry.”

I am reminded of a researcher on a mission to prove that all crows are black. To achieve that, he was required to go out and observe all the crows he could find and note their colour. On one rainy day, however, he decided to stay indoors and yet continue collecting his research data. What he did to make that possible was to make his hypothesis stand on its head with a double negative: “Whatever isn’t black isn’t a crow”, which does flow logically from his original hypothesis. So all he had to do now was to pick up all the non-black objects he could find in his house and note that they weren’t crows! Research made easy!

Translated literally, it says: “God, you have created me, nurture me”, though the exact sense it conveys is: God, you have created me, now how about taking care of me!

Rôchlay, Deva, pôs

You invite a family to dinner. They arrive by the last bus. They enjoy the meal alright. But when the dinner is over, they have a problem getting back home. You have no option but to crown your invitation to dinner with an offer to drive them back home or else accommodate them at your place for the night! Rôchlay, Deva, pôs!

Or perhaps your friend, Sebby, has to travel a long distance to go to work. Now, seeing that his work place happens to be quite close to your residence, you generously offer him accommodation in your own house, and boy! Is he glad to accept your offer! Now it takes him just five minutes to walk his way to work. But that isn’t the end of the story.  When it’s dinner time, Sebby quite naturally turns up at your dining table as well. Rôchlay, Deva, pôs!

Valichea niban mhôsgak udok means that the drumstick tree gets hydrated in the process of the creeper being watered. This is apparently a simple expression, but is open to somewhat differing interpretations depending on the motivation of the parties involved.

Val means a creeper, any creeper; nib means an excuse; mhôsgak is the dative case of mhoxing, which means a drumstick tree; and udok is water. So the literal translation of the proverb is: with the creeper as an excuse, water to the drumstick tree. Valichea is the singular flex stem of the genitive of val (i.e., ‘of the creeper’). Niban is the instrumental case of nib (meaning ‘with or through the excuse’).

As you can see, there are three parties involved: the creeper, the drumstick tree and the unmentioned but implied party which is the gardener who waters the creeper. Of these, since the creeper is the direct and unambiguous beneficiary of the act of watering, the two possibly motivated parties are the drumstick tree and the gardener.

Fr. Josinho Cardozo is the parish priest of Upaxim. He needs funds to renovate the Church compound. He decides to start a weekly novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, preaches and tweets fervently for several weeks about the importance of the novena, and finally installs in the church a beautiful picture of O. L. of Perpetual Succour without, of course, forgetting to place at the foot of the picture an even nicer money box for the devotees’ offerings. Valichea niban mhôsgak udok. Fr. Josinho (in combination with the devotees) is the gardener while the val or the creeper, to which the effort is directed, is the picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour. And who is the mhoxing (the drumstick tree) or the indirect beneficiary? It is undoubtedly the donation box below the revered picture!

Mezaylem kellem diun filyad zôddlem literally means that one won a god-daughter by giving away a banana from the table, that is, belonging to somebody else. It is a reference to a favour one does, and takes credit for, without having to pay for it oneself, for instance by giving a gift that either belongs to somebody else or is ‘on the house’. Like many other proverbs of this type, it is an observational proverb that isn’t meant to impart wisdom as much as it tries to portray a particular situation with some insight into it.

The word mezaylem is a contraction of mezavelem, literally meaning “from on the table” (locative on). If it were instead in a container, e.g., in a jar, we would use the locative in, e.g., bhornêntlem, meaning ‘from inside a/the jar’.  As you can see, it isn’t a simple locative but a compound postposition, corresponding to a compound preposition in English: from on or from inside. A simple locative would be mezar (on a/the table) or bhornênt (in a/the jar).

Diun literally means ‘having given’ or, as is the case here,  ‘by giving’.

The word filyad comes from the Portuguese afilhado or afilhada, i.e., godson or god-daughter respectively, so filyad or filhad can be any of the three genders — neuter if it refers to a young girl, as is the case here. Notice that the neuter is apparent here only because the sentence is in the past definite. And, as has been mentioned elsewhere in Nostalgoa, when a transitive verb like diunk (to give) is used in the past definite, the verb abandons its loyalty to the subject and agrees with the object (filyad),  which is how we come to know that it is neuter (i. e., a young girl), because zôddlem is neuter. Had the sentence been in the present, i.e., with “zôddta” instead of “zôddlem“, the gender of filyad would be unknown.

Yet another observation. Notice that the sentence is devoid of a subject. It has a verb (zôddlem) and an object (filyad), but no subject. Such a thing is very conveniently done when it is the verb that is important, and not the subject, that is, when the focus is on what is done, rather than on who does it.