Begone, Bengali guilt!

Today is Bengali New Year Day. OK, it is the start of the Tamil and Malayalam Years too. And, it is Ambedkar Jayanti. But, we digress.

On this auspicious day, I shall endeavour to assist the Bengalis to get rid of the guilt around their language: The use of the same word ("kha") for both "to eat" and "to drink". Bongs usually hang their heads in shame when a Hindi-speaking person points out that Bongs eat food and eat water. Well, there are two ways to respond to this.

The defensive way
First, people need to understand that because "kha" means "to eat" in Hindi, it need not mean the same in Bengali (For example, "raNDi" means "come" (in a respectful sense) in Telugu, let us not discuss what it means in Hindi). Why not take "kha" to mean "to consume"? Follow this with a variant of the classic English question, namely, "Since you have two different words for solid and liquid consumption, do you eat soup or drink it*?"

The offensive way
This method is suited for the impatient as well as to address audience who can't reason. "You guys eat air (havA) and eat promises (kasam), so why do you have an issue with my eating milk?"

I hope that with this piece of sage advice, Bengalis will be able to get rid of shame of the centuries.

* So, what do you do with soup - eat or drink?