Tamer Hindi?

[floopilot]

At the local hookah joint, smokediceman decides to try the exotic sounding "tamer hindi (sweet and sour fruit)". It's listed under "fruit juices and smoothies", so I ask the pitt-student-by-day waitress what it's made of. "Of tamer hindi!" she exclaims and then seeing the blank looks adds "it's a pulpy thing, comes in blocks

Comments

[floopilot]

the "Indian date" is a tree native to Africa
oh, really? I didn't know that! Though I'm not surprised - most of the so-called "indispensable" things found in Indian kitchen are mostly imports - chillies, coffee, tomatoes, potatoes .. sometimes I wonder what _did_ we eat before they were introduced?

tamarind trees in India are the preferred hangout places for ghosts?
rotfl .. had completely forgotten the association .. I suspect she would have stopped serving it if I'd enlightened her ;-)

[floopilot]

Thanks for the reco - will definitely add it to my to-read list

[joylita]

Tamar-E-Hind that's what Tamarind is in Arabic.

The Arabs have no clue that people from India are called Indians. All through my life in Dubai, I have been asked by Arabs, 'Hindi?' After a while, I'd just roll my eyes and nod. :)

[floopilot]

Since India was derived from 'hind' I guess they're not that way off ;-)

(Besides 'hindusthani' is quite a mouthful. Maybe they think it's like afghanisthan -> afghani)

[joylita]

they are not *that* way off, but obviously they don't understand the difference between language and nationality.

A person from Kerala will have to very often face the question: You Malayalam? :)

[arvindn]

well, hindi seems to be the arabic word for indian (i don't know, that's what wikipedia says). i'm not sure they're confused, maybe they're just using their local term for indian instead of the english word.

[arvindn]

i love this kind of stuff :) coincidentally i met a student of middle eastern studies a few days ago which prompted me to learn more about arabic. it's fun!

[floopilot]

:) i love the feelings arabic (speech and music) invokes in me .. it's indescribable .. like poetry .. for all i know, they could be swear words but i like to pretend it's deep and romantic :D