Assalamualaikum, and welcome back to Orange Shots.
Today's video is going to be a fun video,
and I invite you to watch it without any bias.
Because when we are on board our ships,
My colleagues and I are not Pakistani, Indian, or Filipino.
We're just colleagues. We are more like friends.
We like to have a lot of fun conversations.
I'm quite shaky about today's video, I'm not sure how you all will take it;
whether you're going to take it positively
or negatively,
my request to all of you is to please take it positively.
It might be unimaginable to all of you
how frank we all are on board.
But when we're on board, we're very, very frank.
My first story goes back to the year 2005,
when I first started sailing with a multinational crew.
I had Indian colleagues, I had Pakistani colleagues,
and then I had Filipino, Romanian, and Croatian colleagues.
When we talk about Pakistani and Indian colleagues,
it is commonly understood that we
probably understand each other's language very well.
For all intents and purposes, it's true as well.
If we talk about the origin of Urdu,
Urdu actually originated from India, not Pakistan.
So there are a lot of people that speak Urdu in India as well.
And on the other side of the coin, due to social and electronic media,
a lot of the differences between Urdu and Hindi words have has dissipated.
It is sort of like British English and American English.
A lot of people pronounce "schedule" differently without even realizing
it's not the British English pronunciation,
"schedule" is pronounced differently in British English.
I'm giving you a common example,
we call "wardrobes", "closets" now.
We also say "taps" instead of "faucets".
So it's almost the same kind of scenario
with Urdu and Hindi.
But back then in 2005 when I joined this multinational company,
the gap between Urdu and Hindi was wider.
I did know Hindi back then
I had learned Hindi from a neighbor when I was younger.
She was basically from India
got married in Pakistan,
so I learned Hindi from here.
But even despite that, there were some really funny incidents.
I tell everyone this, so I thought why not tell you all.
Now there's a word that has become really common,
I've heard a lot of people use it in Pakistan.
It wasn't so common back then.
The word is "khud ka."
It means "one's own."
This combination is all wrong if we talk of Urdu.
This word used to confuse me a lot,
especially when I first heard someone say it.
I'd often think about what it meant.
"Khud" is something else, it's referred to as personality.
"Tumhara" means "you", so
how is my "khud ka" personality related to this word?
I said, "Sir, I don't quite understand what you mean."
Our captain back then was Captain Amit Umar
and he said, "I'm asking you if this is yours."
I had read Iqbal's "Khudi" (the self/ego),
and always used it in that context.
What could "tumhara khud ka", and "apna khud ka" mean?
I really couldn't understand. I asked him to say it in English.
He said, "It it yours?",
to which I replied, "Oh yes, it is mine."
Then we had another captain,
he knew that I knew Hindi.
That captain wanted to learn Urdu.
He would listen to Nazms and Ghazals,
Mehdi Hassan, Noor Jehan.
A lot of Indian singers have sung Urdu Ghazals before,
there's Jagjit Singh, Chitra,
they have awesome renditions of them.
He would listen to them very closely.
He would often ask me the meanings of words too.
One day he came to the bridge.
He was there on the bridge.
He then proceeded to ask me how my "Husn" (beauty) was doing.
I said, "What?"
He, again, asked me how my Husn was doing.
I told him I didn't understand what he was saying.
"I'm not Haseen (beautiful) in any sense."
Then he went, "Man, how's your wife?"
I then told him that's not what wives are called in Urdu.
He told me that he had been trying to learn Urdu
and he actually thought Husn meant wife.
I told him that Husn actually meant beauty, not "wife".
I laughed a lot that day.
How's my beauty?
And you know, the funniest thing happened when we went to South India.
And I repeat, please remove your bias glasses,
don't watch this video with a critical mindset, I'm only sharing my experiences.
My experiences with them were also a bit confusing,
but I'll share them in another video.
So when we went to South India, I already knew
South Indians have the most difficult to understand accents.
Their accent is so difficult, sometimes it's really hard to understand.
I'm better at understanding it now
but back then I couldn't understand what the other person was saying.
So we were at the Chennai Port and our Chief Officer was Samial Sandeep Singh.
He went out of the CCR (cargo control room)
and asked me to open the manifold for the Port Control officer if I were asked to,
he'd already set for the cargo pumps to warm up,
and said that I could start gearing them up.
He told me he had a walkie-talkie on him and I could contact him via that
when the time came to start the cargo. He would then join us in the CCR.
I said: Okay. I'll do that.
I started chit-chatting with the other boys there
in the CCR and we started having our tea.
Then the terminal called on the walkie-talkie,
I picked it up.
The man at the terminal spoke in the most confusing way. He said,
"Simba! Can you open the manifold?"
Now, It sounds very funny
how I'm copying him,
but please take it for what it is: fun.
I said, "Mr Loading Master..."
"You want me to do something with what?"
He replied, "Open... open... open the manifold."
I was so confused as to what he was saying.
He's asking me to do something but I don't understand what that is.
I called him back.
I said, "Mr Loading Master,
could you please tell me again what you want me to do."
He said, "Open... open... open the manifold."
That was when Samial Sandeep Singh came back into the CCR,
he was laughing his lungs out.
He said, "What's he saying?"
I told him I couldn't understand a word.
He's saying "Yaw-pan the manifold."
What does that even mean?
Turns out he was saying, "Open the manifold."
Then the captain joined in, our second officer came in, the chief officer too,
they were all laughing their hearts out.
He kept on laughing.
Then the loading master came in,
he said, "Who was the third officer talking to me?"
I told him it was me.
He said, "What happened. You were not able to understand-"
of course, he wasn't talking like this.
I was super embarrassed.
Because when he was talking I wasn't getting it.
Samial Sandeep Singh sahab and [unclear] Ajit Singh sahab
they were laughing
standing behind the loading master.
They wanted to see what I would do next. I couldn't understand one bit.
And on top of that,
I went into my room,
I had a Hutch sim, it was more common back then.
I later changed to Orange, I think, or Vodafone or something like that.
But the company was owned by Hutch.
Everyone used Hutch back then.
I had a Sony Ericcson phone
and I wanted to send some photos back home.
For that you had to use the MMS feature back then,
WhatsApp didn't exist back then.
I thought I should get my MMS and GRPS services activated.
I called the helpline.
A representative picked up.
Long story short, I asked him
how I could activate my MMS and GPRS.
He said "Okay,
you go to the messaging app.
write 'YUM YUM YES' and send it to 706."
And you know what I did?
I opened messages wrote y-u-m y-u-m y-e-s- and sent it.
No reply yet.
I waited 15 minutes.
Then I called the Hutch helpline again.
I told them I'd written 'yum yum yes' and sent it,
but my GPRS services still weren't active,
neither were my MMS services.
He asked me if I had proceeded to send that message. I said yes.
He said, "You wrote YUM YUM YES?"
I said: Yes I did.
He asked me to write it again and send it.
I picked up the phone again. Wrote y-u-m y-u-m y-e-s
and sent it again.
Still no reply.
I had only one last resort:
to go to the chief officer and
ask him for help since he's a native.
I went into the CCR.
Ajit Singh sahab was there.
I told him I wanted my Hutch GPRS and MMS services activated.
He said, "Sure, send a message. They will get activated."
I told him I'd already done that.
He told me that it didn't take that long. Then I showed him my messages.
He took my phone.
Opened my messages and read them.
The same y-u-m y-u-m y-e-s. He started laughing again.
He called in the second officer again.
He called the captain too. The [unclear] chief as well, who was also a Pakistani.
His name was Muhammad Ahmed.
He was called in, too.
He told them about the third officer's (my) antics.
First, it was the loading master. Now this.
He told them what I'd written and sent,
and that I was surprised the services weren't activated yet.
They all laughed at me.
They told me I was supposed to write and send M-M-S.
I was befuddled. I had to write M-M-S?!
I had been writing "yum yum yes" all this time.
We wrote M-M-S and send the message.
My internet services were instantly activated.
When I was on board. There was one thing I couldn't understand.
I think he was from Bombay. Mumbai.
He would bobble his head like this whenever he was given orders.
Now, I was very confused.
I had told him to open the fire hydrant,
repair it, take it to the workshop and buff it, then bring it back.
He replied, "How, how."
I asked him what that meant. Was that a yes or a no?
He said, "This doesn't mean 'yes' or 'no'. It means 'okay I'll do it.'"
Whether I can do it or not is for later.
It took me a long while to understand what he meant.
What does this expression mean?
It was hard for me. Funny too. But I'm used to it now.
I know now this means "okay".
Now, there's "ho gaa", and then there's "rahay ga".
It was very confusing for me in the beginning;
the way my colleagues used these terms.
Let me tell you the story.
Our captain
he was Vinnay Singh at that time, I think.
Yeah, he was Vinnay Singh.
So he had a seriies,
a BBC series called "Mind Your Language",
if you havent't seen it yet, please do.
It's pretty old, but it's great.
I loved watching that show.
Captain sahab was at the bridge, and I went up to him,
told him I needed something from him.
He asked me what it was.
I told him I wanted the Mind Your Language DVD from him
told him I'd return it after watching it.
He said, "Haan, woh mere computer k paas rahay gi". (Yes, it's next to my computer).
I thought he refused. I said, "So I shouldn't take it?"
He said, "No, go ahead, take it."
I said, "But didn't you say the DVD will 'stay' next to your computer?"
He said yes to that.
I asked him again if I shouldn't take it.
He said, "I just told you to go and get it!"
I, then repeated what he first said to me, about the DVD staying next to his computer.
He agreed, once again.
Again, I asked him if I shouldn't take it.
He said, "Just get lost, man!
Take it and go to your room!"
I said, "Alright sir, I'll go and get it."
He asked me why I was so confused.
I said, "Sir, you keep saying 'rahay gi'."
He asked me what I thought that meant.
I told him that from what I had learnt in Urdu, 'ho ga' meant 'it will be there',
And 'rahay ga' meant 'it will remain there'.
'Rahay ga' as in, don't touch it.
Let it remain there.
'Ho ga', in a sense, means, alright it's there. Go take it.
Captain sahab was amused.
He told me he hadn't known this difference before.
To him, 'ho ga' and 'rahay ga' were the same before this incident.
He admitted that I drove him to a point where he got angry,
he couldn't understand why it was unclear to me.
"Why isn't he going to get it?"
These stories are from my first time onboard a vessel.
Later on I got used to these things. Didn't run into problems as much anymore.
So, I come to the bridge at 8 in the morning,
to take over watch duty from the chief officer.
As soon as I make it to the bridge, he says, "Yar, aj darya barra shant hai."
I knew what 'shant' meant.
I knew the word 'darya' too.
I was still confused.
"We aren't in a river", I said to him.
He said, "We've been in one the whole time."
So I looked over at the water; it's a greenish blue.
"It's a sea, alright", I thought.
I was confused about what he said, so I asked him
"Since when are we in a river?"
He said, "You fool, we've been in a river this whole time."
I said, "We can't be in a river, the draft is supposed to be smaller there."
He asked me why I was so confused.
"You keep saying we're in a river," I elaborated, "we're in a sea."
He laughed hard,
and said, "We call it 'darya' in Mumbai."
I said, "Okay sir, I've written it down. Won't ask you ever again.
Now I know 'darya' and 'samundar' are one and the same".
These were really fun moments,
especially the days when first started out,
I couldn't understand a lot of words.
Anyway, like I requested earlier,
I'm very shaky about today's video
because I'm now sure how you all will take this.
Whether you're going to take it positively or negatively.
My request to all of you is to take it positively
because we're very good colleagues
and when we sit together, we share so many things with each other.
We're very open with eachother.
There are no country or language boundaries between us.
We talk so openly
for most of you it will be hardly [unclear].
But mostly, it's a fun time onboard.
So if you enjoyed today's video,
all my experiences that I shared with you.
If you enjoyed this in any way,
don't forget to like, share and subscribe.
Although I've shared my experiences with you all, I really don't know
what the end result for this video is going to be.
If you liked this video,
and would like me to share more of my experiences with you,
do tell me in the comments.
I'll be very happy to oblige.
I'll be very happy to respond to those comments.
Take very good care of yourselves,
remember me in your prayers.
With tons of love to my Orange Shots family,
and to-be Orange Shots family.
This is me Zahid Nisar,
you're watching Orange Shots,
and until my next video,
ALLAH Hafiz.