Category Archives: Proverbs

Monisha Mantras (4)

Nationality: Indian
Age: 38
Occupation: Alternative Medicine
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/16/17
Primary Language: English

“I am perfectly on time.”

Monisha is my older cousin who has taken a longer route to find what she ultimately wants to do, and that ended up being alternative medicine, so she does acupuncture and provides herbal remedies for people seeking less traditional forms of healing. She’s also very into yoga, hiking, and finding oneself, and as a result, she has lots of mantras that she shared with me after she asked me how college was and I told her I was a little stressed. I decided to write them down, because she’s heard these mantras from backpacking trips through Asia, Europe, and California when she goes with groups of other people for meditation trips. She said that she didn’t know what she wanted to do for a long time, but now she does. I asked her to tell me some of the mantras that helped her at our annual Easter party, and she immediately had some to lend out. She said she uses this one a lot.

Ganga and Her Milk Pot

Nationality: Indian
Age: 49
Occupation: Saleswoman
Residence: Glendale, CA
Performance Date: 4/24/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi

“Ganga and her milk pot. Basically the story is that, it’s someone who, so you get a new job and okay, for example, if you’re an aspiring actor, you go for an audition, and the director really likes you and calls you and says you were very good, and we’ll be in touch. And you, the actress, take that and say, ‘Oh my god, he loved me! I’m so good, I’m going to be selected for this role, I’m going to be a phenomenal star, I’m gonna be super rich, a super famous person mingling with celebrities.’ And the next day you get a call saying you didn’t get the part. So Ganga and the milk pot, she carries her milk pot and she’s got milk in there and she thinks she’s gonna sell the milk and get the money and then the pot falls down on the ground and it breaks and all her milk spills.

This is what we were taught as kids, it’s an Indian folktale, the moral is don’t think so far ahead, and start making plans and stuff, and then you already jump to step 10 from one thing.”

This is a proverb of sorts that my mother told me when I asked her if she remembered anything her mother had told her from childhood, any stories or morals. This is her word for word retelling of that story, and it means a lot to her, because when she was growing up, her mother would tell her and her sisters this story all the time. She says it’s taught her to not get too ahead of oneself.

Jo Kheer Piyae

Nationality: Indian
Age: 77
Occupation: Anesthesiologist
Residence: Glendale, CA
Performance Date: 4/24/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi

“Jo kheer piyae, so veer thae, dhand zor vuthan, sutha suhan lagan, aakhun jyot vudhay, dhadhi suhan thae, de kheer ama p school vuchan.”

This is a childhood rhyme in India. First the mother is telling the child: The one who drinks milk grows very strong. His teeth are bright white and beautiful, his eyesight is always good, it makes him or her look beautiful.

The child says: Mom, please give me milk so I can drink milk and then go to school.

My grandmother says he says this because he knows that health is wealth. Her mother used to sing it for her when she was a little girl living back in India. Every time I didn’t want to drink my milk as a child, she would sing this song for me.

Camel and the Arab

Nationality: Indian
Age: 77
Occupation: Anesthesiologist
Residence: Glendale, CA
Performance Date: 4/24/16
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi

One very cold winter night, this Arab was riding camel and he was feeling very cold, so he pitched a tent, lit a fire inside the tent, and he tied the camel outside the tent. And he was warming himself up inside the tent. And the camel peeked in and said, “Please can I just put my nose in the tent, because my nose is feeling very cold and it will warm up the air I’m breathing.” So Arab said, “Okay, just the nose.” And then the camel said, “You know my ears are buzzing because of the cold breeze, could I just put my ears in?” So Arab thought, “Yeah, why not, there’s plenty of space in the tent, you can put your ears in.” And then the camel said, “You know my neck is cramping because of the cold breeze, can I just put my neck in?” Arab said, “Yes, there’s space for your neck.” And slowly like that, camel kept requesting one leg, other leg, and slowly he threw the Arab out and sat in the tent warming himself. The moral of the story is that kindness is good but don’t be so kind that you are left in a lurch helping somebody.

My grandmother’s mother told her this story. She used to tell all eight of her children bedtime stories, and this was one of the stories she told my grandma specifically. My grandma says, “She had always told me to be kind to people, but that you first must look after yourself before you can look after other people.” I asked my grandma to recount this story, or any fable with a moral she’d heard growing up, and she shared this one that her mother told her. I asked her if she thought of the fable often, and she said yes. She was close with her mother, who passed away not long after I was born, long after my grandmother had brought her mother to California from Mumbai.

Jo Jaagat Hai Woh Paavat Hai

Nationality: Indian
Age: 52
Occupation: CPA
Residence: Glendale, CA
Performance Date: 4/25/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi

“The early bird gets the worm” in Hindi is “Jo Jaagat hai woh paavat hai.”

This is an Indian proverb (Punjabi Proverb) that my dad’s father used to say to him and his brothers in the morning. It essentially a phrase we’ve heard before in English, but the Hindi version of it means that phrases like this were also translated across countries and languages, but have the same meaning at heart. My dad has often said this phrase out loud to us when we were children, but he also said I had the same reaction as he did when his father would say it to him: to crawl back under our covers and continue to sleep. My dad said that his grandfather told his father this phrase, and so his father began to say it to him, and he began to say it to my brothers and I. He’d say this phrase to tell us to get up early, because the one who rises early “wins the day.”