“We must never lose”

"Chalo chalo futteh kuro” (Be victorious) boomed a familiar voice from the rear of the audience at Kitab Khana, the bookshop in Bombay’s Flora Fountain area on March 15, 2016, where nearly 200 people had gathered for the launch of Parsi Bol 2 — Insults, Endearments & other Parsi Gujarati Phrases. The "expanded edition” of the volume was published after the first edition published in 2013 by photographer and screen writer Sooni Taraporevala and journalist Meher Marfatia was sold out. Loud applause greeted the dapper actor Boman Irani who was to formally launch the edition.
"I see some people in the cheap seats,” Irani remarked, waving to the crowded balcony in the bookshop where latecomers were standing. Addressing the non-Parsis in the audience, he threw at them some of what he called his favorite phrases from the book, with a challenge to translate, including some rather outré ones. It was all in good humor, and Khalid Mohamed, film critic and erstwhile lead editor of Filmfare who was in the audience, was quick to articulate a prompt for which part of the human anatomy "Nalla amba par motti keri (large mangoes on a small tree) referred to. On a more serious note, Irani wondered why the book was not conceived much earlier and reminded the audience that "our language is something that we must never lose.”

So what were the challenges that the duo faced when putting together the new volume, Parsiana asked after they signed copies of the book for the buyers. Nothing really, it emerges, as they were gratified by the response to the first volume and the new contributions "just poured in.” Taraporevala lets on that getting the exact grammar right was a minor challenge. Marfatia says they were accused of having a sanitized version of our colorful phrases” in the earlier book, something which they have been at pains to rectify in the expanded volume. Their most gratifying moment? "The book is in your hand, isn’t it?” smiles Taraporevala.
With a distinctive yellow cover (the previous one was postbox red), the book includes phrases from both the 2013 volume as well as new ones contributed by enthusiasts who had offered their pet verbiage in response to Taraporevala and Marfatia’s request. An audio CD is included with the volume, which has Irani reading out certain colorful phrases from the new set of contributions; the phrases from the first volume have been recorded by actors Dolly and Bomi Dotiwala who were also present at the launch.
"It is much bolder,” Farzana Cooper, one of the illustrators of the volume along with doctor-cartoonist Hemant Morparia, told Parsiana just prior to the launch. Stating that she had the freedom to choose which of the phrases she wanted to illustrate, her personal favorite is Boom burada, which figures in the section on Twin Words, aptly illustrated by a shouting match between a fishmonger and a woman in a floral frock. She had "less than two months to complete all the illustrations” and says that she had "total fun while doing it, as I identified with the idiom, so all the creative juices were flowing.” Eighty-nine-year-old Rutty Manekshaw who is credited in the book as the translator and was acknowledged by Taraporevala and Marfatia as "our mainstay and guiding spirit,” told us that the translations for the phrases that the duo referred to her took no more than two days.
A lot of hej vej (hard work) has gone into the book which will make you laugh hysterically, or as the book says, aatarda ma vul aaya etla. FARROKH JIJINA