It was 1994, and the one audio cassette that was playing in every household was Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! And Maye ni Maye, I believe the first song on the cassette, was increasing the income of the neighbourhood dance classes. There was a line in the song that intrigued me for a long while, that went “us jogi ke sang meri tu kar de ab kudmaai.”
That stumped me because neither I, nor the people I knew, seemed to know what this kudmaai was. A few years later, when the Internet was there to help us, I found out that it was a Punjabi word, which meant engagement, sagaai, roka, basically deciding that these two are now going to be married to each other.
Now, there is a new song in Rocky aur Rani kii Prem Kahaani that is called ‘Kudmayi’ with the lines going ‘teri kudmayi ke din aa gaye’, basically meaning that we didn’t realise the time to get your marriage fixed has arrived so quickly.
Just for reference, the word is pronounced as kuRmaai, with a ड़ sound (/ɽ/) there and not ड.
