Day VIII in Bhubaneswar - India trip 2017

I would highly recommend all to visit CHOCO GALERIA, located on the ground floor of Hotel 7Saat in Salashree Bihar near Info city. Awesome ambience and quality stuff available at an affordable price. It is run by Mousumee Patnaik, wife of my friend Sanjay Patnaik who passed away a year and half ago. 

The newly built capital city of Bhubaneswar has been a city of immigrants from the beginning - mostly salaried class people from coastal Odisha with the exception of A G Office which had sizable number of folks from Andhra Pradesh. The original inhabitants, especially those from the Old Town area used to call the planned city dwellers on their outskirts as denizens of GOLAAM NAGARI (Slave City), ascribed to the Government servants residing there.

Also there were the BADAGADIYAs, the folks living in a village named as BADAGADA on the eastern side of the city and now engulfed by the gargantuan city. The Badagadiyas prided themselves as blue blooded original inhabitants of Bhubaneswar, bullying over those who recently moved into their surrounding neighborhoods. Often chided as MUNDA (diehard morons with little brain), they were known to be naive, slow witted and prone to violence. Their heads were rumored to be stuffed with cow dung, impacting their ability to apply logic and reasoning.

One day the head of the village who was getting persistent headache visited a doctor. He came back triumphantly announcing "Doctor checked my head and found nothing in it" which was followed by cheers from his fellow villagers. Though we were in awe of their muscle power it never detered us from poking fun at them.

Now Bhubaneswar has a sizable chunk from Western and Southern Odisha, not to mention out of state immigrants. Listening to people at stores, shopping malls, restaurants, drivers of Ola and Uber (many drivers came to Bhubaneswar as an opportunity a Bargarh, a Balasore or a Barhampur could provide) , I could figure out from their accents their place of origin as follows :

Sambapuri - Words ending with "Maa", like JIMAA (Let's go), KHAIMA (Let's eat). Though called Sambalpuri, the dialect varies quite a bit depending on whether you are from Sundargarh, Sambalpur or Kalahandi.

Nayagarh - Dasapalla accent where they speak in a poetic way with each sentence ending with "MA", eg, HELA MA (it happened).

Angul, Talcher - Sentence  jump starts with KIRAA, eg, KIRAA KUTTIBI JE (Will bang you)

Southern Barhampuri - TANKE BOILE E TRAFFICKI BADA BIZZARA EKKA (As they say this traffic is so irritating), their accent has a strong Telugu influence.

North Balasore, Bhadrak accent - KOODIE CHOORA SURSA CHOORI KALE (Twenty thieves stole mustard), with a tinge of Bengali sweetness and softness.

And so on. All scramble in the rat race to buy land, homes and apartments in the ever expanding city which will put the "Big Bang theory" to shame, akin to drunken sailors unsure about future. The city's water table and green coverage is fast shrinking. When the city commenced outgrowing itself, the inept and corrupt authority slept like KUMBHAKARNA (the legendary demon from our mythology who cherished sleeping). As usual, one day when they wake up it could be the classic case of - too little, too late. More later....