Chitt Ailea?

In the days of old, there used to be two common forms of greeting. One was the usual “How are you?” or preferably “Are you well?”

To a male person: “Tum boro ahai mum?”

To a lady: “Tum bori ahai mum?”
To a younger girl: “Tum borem ahai mum?”
To two or more males: “Tumi bore ahat mum?” and
To two or more ladies or persons of mixed gender: “Tumi borim ahat mum?” 

Notice the “mum” (pronounced as a nasal moo) at the end of the greeting. That word has a special nuance. It bundles a wish along with the question. In fact, it is like saying “Are you well?”, “I hope you are well” and “I presume you are well” all packed into one sentence. (Incidentally, the Mangalorean equivalent of mum is gi).

And that greeting was almost always followed immediately by the other one:

“Chitt ailea?”

(Have you received a letter?), or better still, “Chitt ailea mum?” — another bundled sentence.

But wait a moment… a letter from whom? Well, that was immaterial. As long as you have received one. After all, it was more of a formal greeting, so why would one ask who the sender might be? Besides, the person addressed could be having several family members living away. So, mentioning the name of each potential letter-sender would kill the flow and spontaneity of the greeting.

And given that almost every family had someone or the other living or working abroad or in another city, usually Bombay, the only channel of communication in those days would be the post (or, in urgent cases, the telegraph). So a letter being delivered by a postman was an important periodic event that everybody would look forward to, and if one didn’t receive any letter for a long time, it would be a cause for concern.

So the phenomenon of receiving a letter and the mention of it got ingrained into Goan culture with some proverbs, superstitions and songs growing around the subject. The crow was no longer just a scavenger and a grain burglar: he was also given the designation of a herald, whose cawing announced the arrival of a letter, while the postman, who was then guaranteed to be just round the corner, merely served as his delivery man.

The following traditional song illustrates this role of the crow:

Kavllea kiteak roddtai daran?
Konnui marit tuka faran.
Mhojea potichi khobor haddleai tôr taran,
Uddun voch re borean.

Kavllean rekad mhaka haddlo
Mhozo poti ghara ailo
Ani sukha-sontosacho abrasu dilo
Poleak tenkoun polo

You may like to hear how it might sound.

In English it would read thus:

O Crow! Why are you cawing away at my doorstep?
Somebody may fetch a gun and shoot you down!
​If you have brought some news of my husband by telegraph,
Then do fly away before harm comes your way!

The crow brought me good tidings,
My husband arrived home
And gave me a hug of joy and delight
With his cheek against my own.

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 To those of you who may be grammatically inclined

There are two inflections of kavllo

used in this song: kavllea and kavllean. While the nominative singular is kavllo, kavllea (O Crow) is the vocative singular (i.e. calling or addressing the crow) and kavllean is instrumental singular. As mentioned in the grammar section of NostalGoa, whenever a transitive verb (haddunk in this case) takes the preterite tense, it abandons the subject and takes the number and gender of the object instead. In this case, in the second verse, haddlo is masculine not because kavllo, the subject, is masculine but because rekad (message), the object, is masculine. So if the object, rekad, were to be replaced by say chitt, which is feminine, the verb would change to haddli, thus: kavllean chitt mhaka haddli.

It may also be worth pointing out, in this connection, that one often comes across Konkani writers who confuse the instrumental with the locative in. For example, in the song Chêddva gô Chedduva

, it is not uncommon to see the second line written as “hortan boson kitem kortalẽi thinga” instead of “hortant boson …” Hortant is locative in, whereas hortan would be the instrumental case.

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No matter the development that has taken place in communications since those days, no matter if every other Goan may now be going around with a cell phone in his pocket, the “chitt ailea?” greeting will still be appreciated even today, at least in the Goan countryside.