Sunday, May 20, 2007

#2 CHUMMA … The Irony

There are two different ways a person reading the title will approach this piece of blog, depending upon where she/he hails from. The deciding factor boils down to the extent of reader’s interaction with people living in SOUTH INDIA (people with origins in South + people relocated here).


The main reason is existence of the word in two or more languages (Hindi, Kannada and probably other South Indian dialect’s) WITH DIFFERENT meanings.

In case you are from a HINDI speaking zone and have no idea about the languages in South of India, you would probably be guessing this blog has got something to do with KISS (me kissing somebody, vice versa or something along similar lines).Well you are a bit wrong footed here.

For most of us the word was probably introduced by Kimi Katkar and BIG B himself in the movie HUM (one of my personal favorites) and is not heard or used that often.

And if you are from the other half lot, you would probably be guessing what kind of title is this, since for you CHUMMA is not a kiss but just simple TIME PASS.


I have no idea how did they come upon relating chumma with time pass, weather it’s a mere slang of some other longer word or it actually is present in the scripts, all I know is it’s dam famous and probably the most frequently used word in this part of the world.

YES guys (pals from the first category) believe it or not, chumma here means simple time pass, no relevant reason for an action. Imagine what happens when the two meanings merge into each other in the general sense I.e. chumma = kiss = time pass, no big deal kinda situation, what do ya get???????

A Imran Hashmi + Malika Shrawat movie, with more chummas then dialogues


New to Bangalore, had a lot to learn bout the culture and life down here. In those initial days of highly accelerated learning curve had made an image of the language used here. Since both Hindi and Kannada directly or indirectly link their origin to Sanskrit, my initial approach was to try and catch all the similar sounding words, map it with their meaning in which ever language I knew and get the essence of the sentence spoken.

Here surfaced the CHUMMA.

Applying the same concept I aptly took the HINDI meaning for the word and tried to make some sense of the dialogue. Boy what a shock that was…….

Actually was planning to somehow explain the entire shock effect in the blog, but now that I have got accustomed to the word, can’t really construct the same scenario to appropriately put it into my words.

What I will do is give a few samples of it so that the point is somehow registered.

A limited encounters where the word was used in an English statement.

“Let’s go and chumma do it guys”

Chumma wanted to pull your leg re”

For obvious reasons cant pen down the countless times have heard it in Kannada dialogues.

Will end this one with a few examples of the its usage, so that my pals from Mumbai get accustomed to this word and save themselves the shock and the confusion in case I happen to use it in their presence.

Q: What are we up to?

A: Chumma nothing at all pal.

Q: Why did you do that?

A: chumma wanted to screw it.

Q: Define a Boss.

A: An old fellow who claims to know lot of things and chumma sits around shouting at you for all the wrong reasons.

…. And the list goes on and on. Probably will have a lot more situations in comments when the guys from here read this one and decide to convert a few from Kannada to English.

16 comments:

Karthik said...

Dude in order to help your northie friends(guys north according to us is anything above bangalore)
chuma felt like leaving a comment and continue the good work........

Bhargav said...

Just a small bit of correction... Chumma doesn't mean TIME PASS but is a precursor to anything related to timepass... For ex, you use the phrase "Chumma Timepass"...Which means "just for timepass".. 't isn't timepass in itself...

So the Imran Hashmi + Malika Shrawat movie,would be more chummas chumma, than dialogues...(on the first occasion, the "chummas" would refer to the Hindi Chumma while the latter would point to the south-indian modified version of the same... Literally translated it would mean,
Imran + Malika would be more kisses just like that than dialogues.

Unknown said...

Dude I too was in a similar confusion when I first heardthe word... but got accustomed to it by now... Now the problem with me is, I know both kannada and marathi, even then I find it difficult ( sometimes) to follow the bang kannada..

Rohit Ranganathan said...

Good Goin
Try posting it on Logon ka jaal

Jobin Thomas said...

@bhargav:
just a li'll tweak
egjactly sir.. "chumma" means "simply".. so "chummas chumma" wud mean "kisses simply"

Shariq said...

I am sure jobin will know quite a bit of "chummas" given his vast experience...
@kaushal - You should have taken jobin's help in writing about chummas...

Ann M said...

dudeh one suggestion:
please dnt use the blue-black combination in your post.i screwed up my eyes reading th blue sentences..! :)
and as jobin said "chumma" means "zimbly" .! mallu touch.!

Morpheus said...

Oye..... Tussi great ho jii..... Chakke pe Chakke maarte jaarahe ho..... Kamaalka blog likhi hain jii..... Wonderfool..... Wonderfool.....

Sejal said...

I too have been listening to this word for long after shifted to blore.. your blog solved my confusion :)

Anonymous said...

gr8 job keep on posting

Abhijeet Anand said...

@bhargav & @jobsy
Well both your versions are correct. This is just the multiple ways to express the feeling in a language itself. so "simply" & "just for.." or "just like that..", they all are correct..
Although I am not a master of kannada or for any other language per se, one thing that I would point out is that just for example take these two sentences in english and the quoted words under consideration.
1. Will you go "by" meter?
2. How to go to yeswantpur "from" jayamahal?

When you ask the same in hindi the quoted words will translate to "se"
like "meter se" or "yeswantpur se".

So its evident that one word in one language can have multiple forms in the other depending upon the context, which remains true for all languages. Contextual meaning.

And I presume the same wa being suggested by the author if this blog topic.

Kindly correct me if I went wrong somewhere in explaining.

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