Alif Be Te, Bury My Granny, I Say

Translator’s Note:  Excerpted from “That’s a Fire Ant Right There” (English translation of Mohammed Khadeer Babu's Telugu book 'Dargamitta Kathalu') this story dismantles the conventional stereotype that Urdu is the ‘main’ language of Muslims in India. Wrapped in dry wit and humour and disguised as an anecdote from childhood, it also drives home the harsh truth of how for children in our country, learning languages is more of an imposition and a painful compulsion at home and school.

The key challenge in translating this Telugu story about (not) learning Urdu, into English, is the wonderful blend of three languages in the source text, which in turn demands a ‘localised’ variety of English in translation - an English garnished with Indian Bhashas, Indianisms and Indian sounds. To preserve the colloquial and conversational nature of the narration, it came in handy to retain more than a few elements from the source text as is, including forms of addresses and suffixes in Telugu, e.g. rey, mey, abbaya, ra, saami, but also words like parvet, saar, and aivoru, which the reader can take a guess at.

All the children in our Kasaabgalli were paralyzed on coming to know that the ZP Urdu aivoru had moved on rent to the house behind Ghousjaan’s. Playing on the heap of sand near Almas’s house, we came to a dead stop when the news broke and slouched wherever we were sitting in the sand.

‘It’s true, mister! I’m coming here right after seeing aivoru unloading his stuff from the tyre cart. My mother said I have to go for parvet tuition there from tomorrow. And also learn Urdu,’ said Ghausjaan’s son Sandaani, his face going pale. He was scared stiff that this parvet tuition terror had landed right next to his door.

On hearing the word Urdu, Shammi too went into a tizzy.

‘What am I going to do now? My mother may send me too to that godawful thing,’ she cried, getting all hot and bothered. Thanks to my granny, she was terrified of Urdu lessons.

Shammi lived in the house opposite ours. Her father Ahmadu Basha was a lorry driver. This Shammi came to our house morning, noon and night to play with me. And that was when my granny cast a beady eye on her. 

She pounced on her mother Khurshidbi when she came to borrow some ginger for the curry. ‘Mey Khurshida! See how you are raising your daughter, not teaching her even a shred of Urdu. Do you have any sense at all, mey? When she is married off tomorrow, won’t everyone at her in-laws’ place turn their noses up at you? Won’t they jeer and spit at her for not knowing Urdu?’ My granny scared the wits out of her and made a grab for Shammi.

Next, she baited our father.

‘Rey, abbaya! Neither you nor this person (pointing to my mother) can read or write a paisa worth of Urdu! Are you going to raise your children also like this, to become fit-for-nothing bums! At any rate, there is neither a Quran nor a Namaz in this house. Once I begged this great woman to learn the Fateha at least, but the smart one can’t even learn that. Looks like Urdu and Arabic are going to end with me in this house.’ She ranted and raved and with her histrionics snared both me and my brother.  

And then? She swooped down on us, and how!

It went something like this every evening. After the Magreeb Namaz my granny caught hold of the three of us, splayed a kerchief or topi on our heads, taught us alif, be, te—the Urdu alphabet—and twisted our fingers and gave us chumtas until we wrote it all down from memory. (Now don’t get it wrong, dear reader—chumtas are not sweets, it’s just another name for a nice pinch on the thigh!)

That Shammi was an oaf to boot. Unable to learn alif, be, te and powerless against my granny’s chumtas, her thigh would turn red at one end while her eyes filled up with tears at the other.

So to let out all that heartburn, all through our playtime she’d sing — ‘Alif, be, te…Bury your granny, I say.’

I didn’t have any less of a grouse either, right? So I’d join in too, singing the same in Urdu— 

‘Alif, be, te…Hamari dadi ki khabar be te’.

Very soon, not able to tolerate the torture of my granny’s Urdu lessons at home and the English and Telugu lessons that went over our heads at school, Shammi—how she convinced her mother I don’t know—fled to her elder sister’s house in Mungamooru. For ten days, there was no trace of her. Meanwhile, as soon as it was evening, I too began to mumble that I had Unit tests at school and would sit down with my English book, reading ‘Ramayya—The Cobbler’. But it was my brother who really slayed it. He rebelled outright—‘Go, go mey! Get going! Who wants to learn this headache-of-an-Urdu?’

Frustrated, my granny too gave up on us, ‘Get lost, you unbelieving Kafir asses! You will reap what you sow.’

We had made it out alive from her clutches somehow, but now this! So we sat there making plans to escape from the scourge of this new Urdu aivoru. ‘Apparently this aivoru doesn’t let go of the stick once he picks it up, saami! Since my brother knew this already, he opted for Telugu instead of Urdu in sixth class,’ said that fellow Yousaf, sending a shiver down our spines. With this blow, we had no option but to come up with a plan immediately.

‘Ta-tta-da… idea!’ said Sandaani, son of Ghousjaan.

‘What, ra, what, ra?’ we all asked him eagerly.

‘Jaafar saar… Wisdom Tutorials,’ he said, snapping his fingers.

All our excitement evaporated.

‘My foot! We didn’t join that parvet because they don’t teach well, remember? And they also charge ten rupees fees, mister,’ said Yousaf.

‘So what if the fees is more? They teach you without beating, at least. And it seems they don’t mind even if you bunk in the middle of the class,’ said Sandaani.

‘Yes, ra. Wisdom is better any day than that Urdu aivoru’s torture,’ said Shammi, in support of Sandaani. 

If Shammi said yes, could I be far behind? ‘I’m in too,’ I said.

In a trice all of us got up, dusted the sand from our chaddis, and went home. Putting on our best act as studious, God-fearing, book-loving children, we joined Jaafar saar’s parvet at breakneck speed. Only after joining this Urdu-shunning good-for-nothing tutorial did we manage to avoid the plague of Urdu permanently.

From then until now, I’ve never regretted even once that I didn’t learn Urdu or that I don’t know Arabic, or that I have never even touched the Quran in these languages, only in Telugu.

But after all these years, sipping on chai and blowing cigarette puffs with acquaintances in the Hyderabad Press club or in Irani hotels, when every poetry-rattling loafer worth his salt asks me, ‘Do you know Maqdoom? Do you know Faiz Ahmed Faiz? Jeelani Bano? Sirajuddin Maula?’ and then takes pity on me, ‘We are not that lucky anyway, boss, but how could you, being born a Muslim, not know such exquisite poetry in Urdu?’ I really feel like burying my granny for not forcing this honey-like language down my throat back then by trick or by treat.

Excerpted with permission from “That’s a Fire Ant Right There” by Mohammed Khadeer Babu, translated from the Telugu by D V Subhashri, published by Speaking Tiger, 2026.