“Kaila Jadum Polough”

“Fruits of a rotten tree”

My informant first heard this saying when she was in a little child, around the age of 5. She says that people say this when they don’t want to answer a really stupid question or they are just too lazy to answer someone back. This saying is in the language of Sourashtra which is a language spoken in India. Over the years it is slowly becoming extinct. There is writing text for this language but no one uses it anymore. It is more of a spoken language. That is why there is no accompanying text to the saying.

My informant said that she does not know why the saying has to do with rotten fruits. She says that it was probably made up really long ago in the 19^th century.

As I was growing up my informant said it to me many times. Here is a transcript of one of those incidences, translated into English:

Ashwin: Where are we going tonight?

Rani: To aunt preeya’s house.

Ashwin: What time are we going?

Rani: 6 o’clock.

Ashwin: Who will be there?

Rani: Kaila Jadum Polough “Fruits of a rotten tree”

In this transcript I was asking a lot of questions about something that isn’t very important. As my mom was getting impatient she said the saying. The strange thing to notice is that my mom was the only one who said that in the family. My dad would never say this saying. This was probably because she and her family members said it a lot when she was growing up.

This saying is very similar to the saying many teenagers say these days, “Your face” or “your mom.” These sayings are said in the same context and the same situations. I highly doubt there is a some kind of relation between the two sayings because of the distance between where the two languages are spoken.