A lot of people struggle with speaking Urdu/Hindi — the intonations aren’t always easy to master, especially if you live overseas and don’t get to use the language as much in your daily life.

But then someone says something which makes your dil ki tarkan faster and if you think we made a mistake there, let us present our lead offender of the evening: US-based comedian Hasan Minhaj.

In an interview last week, he said he likes to order daal with extra “dharka”.

Yeah, we were confused too, we thought we’d misheard the guy, but then he doubled down: “D-H-A-R-K-A, dharka, it’s the fried onions you put on the top,” he told Food & Wine magazine.

We actually don’t have words, so we’re just going to let the comments from under the post do the talking for us.

One user wondered what it must be like to be the waiter who had to decipher what Minhaj was talking about when he asked for dharka, especially with no context.

Another was nicer about the whole thing, saying it was sweet of the California-based comedian to try and connect with his culture like this. They explained that tadka was, in fact, tempering, not just fried onions.

Others said they wanted Minhaj’s confidence, even comparing him to someone — or something — else that kept making mistakes with huge amounts of unearned confidence.

One comedian from India even challenged Minhaj’s desi credentials saying he might as well be white if he’s having ‘dharka’ with his daal.

We don’t know about onions, but this person in the comments was right when they said something definitely got fried.

This other user was asking the right question: Do the aunties know yet?

Seeing how everyone thinks he needs to fix his ways, we hope Minhaj has learnt his lesson. If he has and he’s ever in Karachi, we’d love to take him out for some daal with extra tadka.

Source link