What’s the word for...
Candida Remedios, 30, an archivist with a pharmaceutical company, spends her weekends on something her toli (tribe) would be proud of. She posts a quiz on Instagram (@can.dee. duh) that’s her own little effort to highlight and preserve the largely undocumented East Indian language. This is the language spoken by the original Catholic inhabitants of Mumbai (as opposed to the later arrivals from Goa, Mangalore etc).
East Indian is a sort of Creole that combines elements of Marathi, Portuguese, Konkani and Hindi. The culture, from language to cuisine, festivals and wedding rituals, is fading in the melting pot of Mumbai, especially as successive generations have emigrated and married into other Catholic communities. Concerned, the community set up a museum within an old home in 2013 and, in 2019, brought out an East Indian-toenglish dictionary.
Remedios volunteered as project coordinator on the dictionary effort. She now refers to her copy for help with her quizzes, and in those quizzes she combines her love for her heritage, the city of her birth, and her passion for the language.
Remedios posted her first quiz on February 21, 2020, International Mother Language Day, just for fun. “I thought that only cousins and relatives would participate. I was surprised at the number of my followers that attempted the quiz just for fun,” she says. “Some non-east Indian speakers were surprised at getting many answers right too.”
Encouraged, Remedios began a Word of the Week series. The response was enthusiastic. “I received DMS from people saying they hadn’t heard a certain word since their grandmother last used it. Some East Indian followers from other parts of the city would tell me that they pronounced the word differently, or even at times had a whole different word for something!”
People seemed eager to engage, so in June, Remedios turned her Word of the Week into an interactive weekly quiz. Each consists of five to ten questions, with answers shared 24 hours later. There’s a mix of easy and not-soeasy questions, all focused on East Indian culture, from kitchen implements to rituals, elements of traditional architecture and vocabulary. Answers include a pronunciation guide in Devanagari and Roman script.
To keep things interesting, she plays with her quiz template. She has, for instance, translated major Hollywood and Bollywood titles into East Indian, and invited quiz-takers to guess the original (scan the QR code alongside to take this quiz yourself)
“My quizzes are aimed at anyone with a love for history or East Indian culture or both,” she says. “The winner each week would get a shoutout. Now, if they are willing to share their address, I send them a Mumbai-themed postcard.”