Meaning: An empty threat (literally: a palm-leaf snake)

When I was a kid, we didn’t have TOYS Я US where we could hope to get our birthday presents from. And in Goa, where I grew up, there used to be no such thing as a birthday celebration in the first place, though I must admit that when I reached the age of twelve, my mother did let me celebrate my birthday in the evening by lighting exactly one firecracker (from a braided bunch of 32). But readymade toys always remained a rare kind of a luxury. Instead, we learned to play with our ten little fingers and ten little toes and recite a nursery rhyme that went with it. Sometimes girls would play with pebbles and boys with a rubber ball, if they could find one, or else wait for someone to break a soda water bottle so they could get to play with the marble that had been factory-lodged inside it. Read more »

In the days of old, there used to be two common forms of greeting. One was the usual “How are you?” or preferably “Are you well?”

To a male person: “Tum boro ahai mum?”

To a lady: “Tum bori ahai mum?”
To a younger girl: “Tum borem ahai mum?”
To two or more males: “Tumi bore ahat mum?” and
To two or more ladies or persons of mixed gender: “Tumi borim ahat mum?”  Read more »