Bil Bahadur

Everyday at the restaurant, I eat lunch with people from Nepal (see my previous blog article, "Lunch With the Nepalese," 30 August, 2006). For a couple of months, I have been trying to get the one I call "Uncle" to teach me Nepali. I got tired of asking him. Suddenly, on Thursday, last week, Uncle told me that they had come up with a Nepalese name for me. They said my Nepalese name is Bil Bahadur. I asked Uncle, Cousin, and Billy what it means. Uncle said it doesn't mean anything, it's just a name. I was suspicious, because they kept laughing. For all I knew, they could have been calling me "stupid twat," in Nepali. I got the impression that Uncle had gotten confused and thought my name was Bill.
As I wrote in August, I made up names for these guys, because they have never told me their real names. Recently, the one I call "Billy" has started calling me "Billy" back. I think this confused Uncle and led him to think my real name was Bill. It sounded like Uncle was saying that the "Bil" in Bil Bahadur stands for "Bill." I showed Uncle my badge where it shows my name as Joseph. So what does the Bahadur mean? Today, I asked another Nepalese guy, Lox, who works as a Catering Assistant. He eats lunch at a latter time than we do, so he wasn't aware that the others had taken to calling me Bil Bahadur. I asked Lox what Bil Bahadur means. "Bahadur means brave," Lox explained. That's okay, then.
Today, at lunch, Uncle taught me a couple of phrases in Nepali, just out of the blue. I am not going to attempt to reproduce them, here, as I have no idea how to write them. Once again, Uncle could be tricking me to say something that would make me sound ridiculous. I decided to test them out on Jum, as he also eats later. I tried the first phrase on Jum, which is supposed to mean, "how are you?"
"I'm fine, thank you," Jum responded in heavily accented English. I guess Uncle wasn't trying to trick me. There was another revelation, during lunch. Uncle accidentally revealed Cousin's real name. It turns out Cousin is called, "Nil." Nil gave me a hot chili to eat with my lunch. He often does so. I think it started with him expecting me to freak out, as a lot of English folks don't like very hot food. However, I love hot, spicy food and I suspected what Nil was up to. I ate the chili with no problem. So Nil got into the habit of offering them to me. Beware Nepalese bearing gifts. Uncle says I need to learn fifteen Nepali words per month. Then, once I learn the language, I should go to Nepal and find a wife there. If I hang out with these people long enough, maybe they will reveal all of their secrets.