Today I got a missed (or meeshed as they say here) call from my nanny and I promptly called her back. The missed call is the way to tell someone you want to talk while avoiding the phone minute charge and is our way of communicating. When she picked up I heard giggling in the background and Pollobi began telling me boisterously in Bangla that I needed "to bring home a meesh-tree". A meeshtree is an electrician which I knew we needed because an outlet in the kitchen stopped working over the weekend. I respond by saying that I will try to get one but since we have three days of country wide strikes it will be a few days before he shows up. The giggling continued... Then Pollobi says in Bangla, "No, you need to bring home meeshtee.... giggling Elliot's first tooth came in!" YAY!! Now I get it.... "meeshtee" means a sweet dessert often dripping in sugar syrup - dripping so much so that I have seen people literally squeeze sugar syrup from them before eating them - used to celebrate just about any occasion. Bangladeshis LOVE their sweets. I went on to ask "ekta ba duita?" (1 or 2?) and was referring to the number of teeth that came in. She went crazy with laughter thinking I asked if I should buy 1 or 2 kgs of sweets keeping in mind these would be split between ~4 people associated with this joyous event. Um - 2 kgs of meeshtee would be just a bit excessive!
And to think I told Pollobi just this morning that I swore he was going to get a tooth this week because of the exponential increase in drool yesterday.
Photo to come!
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