Gundu Goondu Goli

The front page of today's paper has a photograph of the aftermath of the train explosion in Iran, showing a number of bodies strewn over bare ground. Lakshmi asked me what it was about. She said something I didn't understand, but used the word gundu. I eventually understood that she wanted to know if the picture was of the aftermath of a battle - by gundu, she meant 'bullet.' This gundu is really some word! I first learned it when someone told me that she had become gundu - i.e., overweight. Then I discovered that a kind of double jasmine flower is called gundu malli - hence, I suppose, 'round jasmine.' (I have yet to look it up in the dictionary, which shows how un-scholarly I am.) And now it's a bullet as well! I'm very impressed.

And as I wrote this I remembered that in Hindi, a medicinal pill and a bullet are both goli, 'round' - so maybe gundu isn't so special...

I had thought that a bird's nest was also a gundu, but I just checked with my informant, i.e., Lakshmi, and learned that that is goondu -- long 'u'. A recurring problem of mine, confusing short and long vowels...

After I asked her, Lakshmi got interested in this question. She came back after ten minutes to tell me that a bird-cage is also goondu, which makes sense. And the huts in the slums, which are small and made, in many cases, out of woven palm-leaf mats, are also, colloquially, called goondu. Which also makes sense - perhaps in both meanings, of nest and cage.