Bridging the language gap between the North and the South: A lesson from a Kannada movie

For those of you who don't know, India is a land of many languages (no, they don't speak ``Hindu''), so not everyone speaks Hindi (of course, if you ARE someone who doesn't know about India, I don't think this page will help you much). Those of you that DO know will know that sometimes it is difficult for two Indians to have a conversation. Especially if one of them is Hindi intolerant, meaning they stubbornly refuse to learn Hindi or they were taught in a school where they could opt out easily and then bully their juniors if they talked in Hindi (alright I'm bitter, so SHOOT me!). What do you do if you are in the following situation:

You recently moved to Bombay with your parents and your sister, after a while are falsely accused of bombing a supercop's car (said supercop stays next door), and are framed, and are jailed and are tortured in your underwear (complete with ketchup on your nuts). You escape, determined to prove your innocence, and after a while, manage somehow to kidnap the Chief Minister of Maharashtra. You think that if you are able to explain your situation to him, and also explain that there is a huge conspiracy against the law by a very well-known bad dude, you will be able to convince everyone else. The main problem: you don't speak Hindi, and he doesn't understand your mother tongue (which happens to be Kannada).

In the immortal words of Dennis Hopper from Speed, What do you do?

What do you do?

Like I always say, I don't really care what YOU do, I'm gonna talk about what Shivraj Kumar does in the movie AK47. A little about this movie before all that. AK47 (1999) was advertised as ``50th movie of [sic] hat trick hero'', said hat-trick hero being Shivraj Kumar, of course. Maybe someday we can also talk about this movie when we talk about stealing producers logos from other people. So, anyway, in this movie, Shivraj's family (including a really irritating Srividya as his mom and the magaaan Girish `Kitply' Karnad as his dad - someday we will also talk about how he revolutionizes the concept of Oota cut in the movie) moves to Bombay, and Shivraj starts college (YAY!!! It was ***MY*** college! The Guru Nanak Khalsa College of Arts and Sciences, motto: The Essence of Wisdom Is Service To Mankind, sidemotto being The Essence of Getting Rich Is Renting The Campus Out To Cheap TV Series Crews, And If We Get Lucky, Some Vernacular Films, If We Are Luckier, B-Grade (College Girl was shot in my college! Amita Nangia gets raped in the classroom I used to learn chemistry in!) Hindi Films, And MAYBE SOME DAY SOME A-Grade Hindi Movie (``Gupt was shot in my college'' was my Int.Ph.D. introduction!)), and walks in during a lecture about the many phases of water :

Prof: Water when heated turns to steam.
Steam when cooled turns to water...
SK: Excuse me, Sir?
Prof: Yes, come in?.... (looks at the note) Oh, new student? Oh! You are from Karnataka?!
(immediately some piano happy-music, as some student in the class - who later frames our man - smiles at him)
Prof: (continuing in monotonous droning voice) Water when cooled turns to ice.
Ice when heated turns to water.
(Brrrrrrringgg....saved by the bell...)
Prof: OK, students, next class.

The students start going down the stairs (and at this point, I remember getting up from my seat in the theater and screaming, ``Hey!! Bhavtosh! Yeh to Khalsa hai yaar! Yeh to mera college hai yaar!'' and applauding as soon as I saw the too-familiar chandeliar on the ground floor) and all that.
Anyway, so Shivraj is eventually framed (for the assassination of aforementioned supercop, who goes by the name of Yeshwant Sinha in the movie, and who in reality is the ultra-cool entity Om Puri - you might remember him from the Jack Nicholson starrer Wolf, where one of his lines is, ``There must be something vild vi-thin!'') and captured and tortured by the Bombay Police (in some weird abandoned warehouse, for some bizzare reason) in his white underwear (white sans a few ketchup stains which are supposed to be blood). One cop kicks him in the balls, and immediately there is an aerial shot of his face, and as he screams, the female chorus goes....``Ammmmaaaaaaaaa.....'''
I don't know how you would do it, but Shivraj escapes from prison (after adorning the statue of the Mahatma with some much-needed clothing, said clothing comprising of the Indian tricolour, which Shivraj originally uses to dodge bullets - according to this movie, *NO* true Indian Police Force officer will fire at anyone who has wrapped the tricolour around themselves), and eventually kidnaps the CM of Maharashtra (who is called Ram Manohar Joshi instead of Manohar Joshi - they didn't want to make it too obvious!!), played by the magaaan (you might remember him as husband of Seema Dev - Kakaji's mooh-boli behen - in Anand) Ramesh Dev. So, we are back to the question: how do you communicate? Here's the dialogue, at least as much as I understood and can show without switching into Kannada mode:

RD: (very poliltely) Are you a terrorist?
SK: (very controlled) No...
RD: Naxalite?
SK: (controlling, but losing it slowly) No!
RD: ISI (for those of you who don't know, that's the Pakistani Intellegence, or so they tell me)?
SK: (loses it completely!) NOOOO!!!!!! (RD is taken aback, and SK repents and starts to cry and starts to speak in a heavily accented Southie, in English followed by one sentence in Hindi)
I yam an aardinary man. Yake mamooli yinsaan! (blah blah in Kannada, explaining in metaphors how he was framed... this is a long dialogue)

RD: (after SK's outburst, still very polite, smiling now) Bete, mujhe tumhari bhasha to samajh mein nahin aayi, lekin tumhari bhasha mein jo aasha hai woh samajh mein aayi. Chalo, main tumhari madad zaroor karoonga! (which basically means: I didn't understand your language, but I understood the hope in your language - which is bullshit he just used hope because it rhymes in Hindi with language; being a politician gives you some talent at bullshit speeches, I suppose - I will definitely help you)...

See how it works? Next time YOU are in such a situation, don't forget to be calm first, then totally lose control, start crying, speak one sentence each of English and Hindi (heavily laced with a Diga accent), and then switch to your life story but in Kannada... don't forget to explain it all to someone who doesn't understand Kannada at all, preferably Ramesh Dev, or better the Chief Minister of Maharashtra.