Silly Saturdays: Yet another self-goal !

I speak three different languages – Hindi, English and Malayalam. It’s no secret that Malayalam is not my forte and Hindi is not my hubby’s favourite either! The trouble is, each time my mum (who is good at both, Hindi and Malayalam) is in town, there is a three-way verbal duel at home. Everything is jumbled up and some random sentences are formed with no logic.

I have one such instance for this week’s Silly Saturdays!

On a recent weekend, as we were driving back after picking mum, we instantly broke in to our monthly updates and catching up. Suddenly, the discussion took a different tangent, when I referred to the Hindi proverb “Ek anar sau bimar” when translated literately to English it reads “One pomegranate and 100 sick”. For the life of me, I can not remember the context now – anyway, to the best my knowledge; it meant one spoilt pomegranate seed and spoils the entire fruit.

Mum thought it meant one pomegranate is so priceless that it can cure 100 sick people. I was absolutely sure mum definitely wrong on this count.

However my Hubby, in his usual cerebral style, takes the discussion to a different level all together, telling us how the name originated. He further explained pomegranate derived its name from grenade. Just like when grenade blasts it breaks into small pieces, similar to the fruit once opened has many granules inside.

So I got really curious and asked Google what he thought of it. The proverb really meant “one woman and 100 suitors”.  I am however still not very happy with the explanation but I can live with it.

But what really overjoyed me is the fact the name pomegranate derives it’s origin from a Latin word 'pomum granatus' and not grenade as my husband thought! In really it is exactly the opposite. The grenade is indebted for it’s name to the fruit, because of its close resemblance to pomegranate.

Sporting a big grin on my face I went to declare victory and how he had missed the mark by a long mile. He calmly reminded the right version of events and the correct conversation syntax. It immediately hit me that I had recollected the events the wrong way around and to rub it in he asked if I needed my mum to testify as his witness.

In the hope of seeing that priceless defeated look his face, I successfully managed to fall flat on my face.

This is the edited version of the story, the original plot was to end in my favour. Just before this was to be published, as part of my victory march, I unfortunately showed the post to my hubby. He noticed the slight deviation from the actual storyline and suggested that I put the record straight. With Christmas gift at stake I didn’t want to be in his bad books!