The Little Glitch: PK Hai Kya?

Peena is Hindi/Urdu for drink, and hence Peekay would mean 'having drunk.'

However, the complete sentence for 'are you drunk?', in the way they have tried to make here, could be 'Peekay aaya hai kya?' or otherwise, 'Piye hue hai kya?' or 'Piye hai kya?' However, 'Peekay hai kya?' wouldn't be heard, at least in the regular Khadi Boli speaking region.

Hence, everybody asking in a promo 'PK hai kya?' wouldn't make sense to me so much as it would have if they had asked something like, 'PK aaya hai kya?' or 'PK aaya kya?' or maybe 'PA hai kya?' which would be like 'Piye hai kya.'

So yes, in a Rajkumar Hirani film, where he likes to keep things quite perfect, this is quite an imperfect sentence for me, especially when the title of the film is involved, and is customized for effect, it's not effective enough. But then, in time the sentence, if too popular, may set its own standards, and settle down in the language, or next to it.

Here is the video of the dialog promo.

Yamaka/ Yamak Alankaar (यमक अलंकार)

Yamak Alankaar is an interesting figure of speech, i.e. alankaar in Hindi. It's basically a word spoken twice or more in poetry, but with more than one meanings for different occurrences of the word.

A simple example would be Sajna hai mujhe sajna ke liye. Here the first sajna means to be adorned, and the second one means her beloved.

Anupraas Alankaar (अनुप्रास अलंकार)

Alankaars have been an important part of poetry, and you can see them in Hindi film music lyrics at times. So here is some detail on Alankaars, first of all, Anupraas.

Anupraas/ Anupras (अनुप्रास) is basically repetition of letters, words or combination of letters in poetry. The most common form of Anupraas is words beginning with one letter repeatedly.

The most common example studied in textbooks is chaaru chandra ki chanchal kirane, khel rahi hain jal thal mein. Here, there are 3 words beginning in cha-, and three ending in -l. Hence, Anupraas.

But then, I think it'll be more interesting if I show you some examples from Bollywood.

One interesting use of Anupraas was tried by Prasoon Joshi in Fanaa, where he used it in the fun song (fun n fanaa could be anupraas too), chanda chamke cham-cham, cheekhe chaukanna chor, cheenti chaate cheeni, chatori cheeneekhor. Not an easy one where he puts twelve instances of cha, with all words starting from the same letter.

One simple use of anupraas was done by Papon in his own album's chhoti chhoti baatein hain ye, where there is a lovely line that goes 'seeli si saanson mein sehme sardiyaan, galti se phir karen hum wo galtiyaan.' Five out of six words in one line, with some lovely poetry.

By the way, Anupraas is something much like alliteration, though the range for the former is, I believe, a little wider.

Do you remember some more usage of Anupraas in Bollywood?