Hindi ki Izzat

We recently had a colleague from our US office visiting India. The firang guy had a tough time surviving on the food in our cafeteria everyday. So, we accompanied him out for lunch on a couple of occasions. One fine day, we ended up talking about languages over lunch.

To start off with, he was amazed by the number of languages that we have in our country. The concept of Mumbaiyya hindi, North Indian Hindi and Puneri Hindi was also beyond his limits of comprehension. He was of the opinion that the richness of a language is based on the fact that there are synonyms for words in one language found in other languages. Like, fat in English is the same as mota in hindi. This got us to finding words in English that do not have synonyms in Hindi and vice versa. The very first word proved to be a show stopper.

While finishing up the last few drops of chocolate sauce on his sizzling brownie, he asked us for the hindi equivalent of the word - sizzling! And my colleague and myself had no clue about this. We tried different hindi words but could not get to one hindi word that best explains what sizzle means in English. So, in case you are proud of your marks in hindi in high school, do take some time off and think of the hindi equivalent for sizzle. Yeh hindi ki izzat ka sawaal hain.

P.S. I have another word that I would know the hindi equivalent of - dieting!