kaalu mukkaalu

March 22, 2022

Around 5-45 AM I was cycling up towards Gandhinagar cross roads. From the corner of my eye I saw a white dog pass through a gap in a fence. A morning walker ahead of me gave a long look at the dog. Out of curiosity I checked out the dog. It was a three-legged dog, its right hind leg was missing. The dog was out of sight but it remained in my thoughts... a three legged dog... mooru kaalina naayi... ಮೂರು ಕಾಲಿನ ನಾಯಿ. In Kannada two words can be merged to form one word. In this case ಮೂರು ಕಾಲು becomes ಮುಕ್ಕಾಲು - mukkaalu. Now lets take a look at the word kaalu... ಕಾಲು. It has two meanings- 1. leg and 2. one quarter.  Ondu kaalu was simplified to kaalu.

All these years I've been using these two words but never knew their origin. Possibly these words came into being in the trading circles when cattle was considered as currency.

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