“Mãy nasleleak bara mãyô”
literally means “one who has no mother has twelve mothers”. However, the number twelve actually means “numerous”, and is more or less equivalent to the words “umpteen” and “zillion” in English usage. We see the word
bara used in in a similar way in the proverb we have already seen:
Mel’lê mhoxik bara xer dud as well as in the metaphor, “
bara brestar ani tera sunkrar“.
However, there is a little more explaining to be done with regard to the intent of the proberb. A mother is universally regarded as a symbol of love, care and concern for her child. It is no different in the Konkani culture. However a mother also stands for other things, e.g., authority and control, and it is this attribute of a mother that is referred to in the current proverb. When a child becomes motherless, he/she may have no one to love and care for him/her, but there will be several to give him/her advice and directions, directions which may even be contradictory to each other, with the result that the child may get confused and find oneself at a loss. It is also implied that the child has no one who really cares for, and is interested in, him or her.
The word naslolo
is an adjective but if, in the sentence, there is no noun (or pronoun) which it can qualify, it itself functions as a noun, exactly like the English word
orphan, which can be either an adjective or a noun, depending on the context.
Naslolo is masculine singular, while
nasleli and
naslelem are the feminine and the neuter form respectively. Now
nasleleak is the dative of
naslolo and it is interesting that it is also the dative of the neuter
naslelem, while the dative of the feminine,
nasleli, is
naslelêk . Now while a little boy is referred to as masuline, just like the grown-ups, it is a common practice to refer to a young girl as tem, which is neuter, whereas a grownup woman is usually referred to as ti (feminine). So in this proverb, whether the child is a boy or girl does not matter because
nasleleak happens to be the dative of both.
Another point to note is that in Konkani the dative case is used to denote possession. For example, “I have a father” takes the form of “to me there is a father.” It is exactly this meaning that is conveyed in the proverb at hand: “To one to whom there is no mother, there are twelve mothers.”
