Amchi Quirks

From an article on Community Quirks by Vithal C. Nadkarni in The Sunday Times of India, Pune, of 12 August 2001

Filmmaker Arun Khopkar once introduced yours truly as someone who belongs to 'hang-palai'. Now 'hang-palai' isn't something like a palav hanging gracefully from a limp, fair wrist. Alas, 'hang-palai' only means 'look here' in konkani. Not in any old konkani, but in the musical dialect known only to Chitrapur Saraswats. Linguist finesse and a polyglot flair for the languages are probably this music-loving community's most noticeable quirks.
While we are on the subject, don't listen to whatever the Bongs tell you. Of course, Bonglese can be chweet. But 'Amchi Konkani' is so much more expressive and refined, particularly when well-brought-up women speak it. As in so many of life's great pleasures, nuance and timing is everything. Insiders know it as aalavaonu-ullounchey - stretching words and vowels almost to breaking point without staining the prim little mouth.
Indeed, strange things happen when a true-blooded Chitrapur Saraswat woman says "Hanga-palounche-wain?" (the same thing which Mr. Khopkar, alas, managed to mangle so completely). Grown men have been known to break out in goose bumps and bellow like maddened moose in the moonlight.
What's quirkier is that the same lovely tongue can also be used to hand out the most outrageous put downs and most salacious gossip. Therefore, the second-most important quirk of these bon vivants is 'zanki'.
Loosely translated as 'ribaldry', 'zanki' is really a state of mind, like Milan Kundera's unbearable lightness of being, which covers all things risqué and roue, which can be twisted into a double entendre. No prizes for actual examples. Suffice it to say, puns, inversions, spoonerisms, allusions and rambunctious riffs are all in order when the Saraswat swain gets into the flow.
Non-Chitrapurs often accuse these genteel worshipers of Saraswati of being hostage to a certain sort of clannishness. Come on, give us a break. I like to think of the Anand Ashrams and the Talmaki-wadis and other Saraswat colonies that scattered over Mumbapuri as monuments to the spirit of co-operation and community building. In this respect, the Chitrapurs are akin to Parsis, another highly evolved and literate but religion-or-ritual-loving community.
For all their rootedness, however, the Chitrapurs also display a remarkable restlessness, may be due to their gypsy genes. Like the Sindhis, they too have successfully spread all over the world. What's more, they often speak of an exodus from their chosen land - from Sharada or Kashmir to Chitrapur, a small village in Karnataka which also houses their Math or the seat of their pontiff at Shirali.
Non-Saraswats, however, tend to be skeptical about these claims. In vain have I tried to convince my sniggering colleagues about the real secret of one's 'Greek-like' profile. But you can't win them all. So what if Frank Conlon*, an American researcher from Seattle, has meticulously chartered the territorial adventures of the Saraswats from the Saraswati Valley in a scholarly tome (printed by a Saraswat Publisher)?
Networking is another Chitrapur Saraswat strength. This stems from the Great Bhanap Law ("Bhanap" is one of the terms of endearment for this community): when you get two or more Amchies together, they will work out their Bhanap Family Tree connections faster than you can say, "Wali Ambat!" or "Vallo Bhairasu!" (Wali ambat is lentil-and-spinach Saraswat specialty and vallo bhairasu is a 'wet towel' that may not necessarily work as a Wet Blanket.)
Contrary to popular belief, all Saraswats aren't necessarily born with a silver fish in their mouth. The original cuisine of the Chitrapurs is fiercely vegetarian. But there's no shortage of renegades. To be fair, however, these omnivores swear by the principles of three elemental exclusions: they don't eat submarines from water, aeroplanes from air and man - I am not sure if the taboo holds for 'woman' - on land.
* Frank Conlon, "Caste in a Changing World: The Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmans 1700-1935"