Avakka and Thangai (Mango Pickle and Younger Sister)

Dear Friends!

Let me explain some terminology so that you can understand what I want to convey today!

Avakka is an Andhra special pickle made of raw mangoes, fine powders of chilli and mustard, salt and enough sesame oil to soak the cut mangoes.

Akka is elder sister in Tamil.
Thangai is younger sister in Tamil.

What does an Avakka, akka and thangai have in common you might wonder. There is, there is.

My husband's sister had made some avakka and shared it with us before going away to Abu Dhabi last month.

My brother-in-law (husband's brother) has come down. As I was serving him food, he wanted to taste the avakka pickle at home. Just to keep the conversation going I told him it was not av'akka but thangai pickle!
He dint understand and I asked him to guess why I was saying thangai instead of av-akka for this pickle.
He came up with some other ingredients for the thangai pickle instead of the usual ones for avakka! He tried taking a few more guesses. I hinted that he could just ring up Abu Dhabi and say the pickle was nice. Even then he just could not connect!

Then I asked him who was in Abu Dhabi? He named his sister's husband who works there! I had to tell him the connection by asking the following questions :D

Where is your sister?
She made the pickle.
She is your thangai.
So this is not akka pickle but a thangai pickle :D

We all had a laughing session after that.

Then later in the day today, I was asked to make the Andhra peanut powder (groundnuts, salt, chilli and other masalas) for someone and I had run out of stock of peanuts.
So I requested my brother-in-law to buy some raw peanuts from a nearby shop.
When I opened the packet I was surprised to find dried green peas in them!

He innocently asked me whether I dint want the dried green peas (Green chana or battanna)! Then I knew again that he had translated the pea to green peas and bought dried green peas instead of groundnuts or peanuts!

I knew I had not communicated properly to him what exactly I wanted.
We should never presume that everybody knows everything that we know.

May god give us patience to extract work from others by communicating in simple and effective way.

Cheers!
Mahalakshmi