Of all the ways to tell someone to get lost, Gujarati has landed on the strangest and by some distance the best.
What does tel leva ja mean?
Word for word, tel leva ja means "go get oil." Tel is oil. Leva is to fetch. Ja is go.
What it actually means is: clear off. Do one. Get out of my sight. It's the Gujarati equivalent of telling someone to take a long walk off a short pier, except instead of a pier there's an errand, and the errand is oil.
Nobody is expecting oil. No oil will be fetched. That's the joke.
Why oil?
Nobody's completely sure, and the theories vary in how cheerful they are.
The gentlest reading is that it's simply the most pointless errand imaginable. Sending someone off for oil is sending them somewhere unimportant, slowly, for a long time. It's dismissal dressed up as an instruction.
There's a darker theory doing the rounds that connects it to oil used in funeral rites, which would make the phrase considerably less friendly than it sounds. Plenty of people repeat this with total confidence. It should be said that this reading is disputed and hard to pin down, so treat it as folklore rather than fact.
Either way, the modern usage has drifted a long way from wherever it started. Today it's mild. Irritated, dismissive, but rarely genuinely nasty.
The beauty of the thing
What makes tel leva ja so satisfying is that it sounds completely innocent.
You can say it in front of people who don't speak Gujarati and you've said nothing at all. You've mentioned oil. Meanwhile the one person in the room who understands has just watched you tell someone to get lost in a full sentence with a shopping instruction in it.
Very few insults come with built in deniability. This one is practically encrypted.
Who gets told this
Siblings, mostly. It's a phrase that thrives in the specific ecosystem of people who are obliged to keep loving you regardless of what you say to them.
It works on a friend who's pushing their luck. It works on a cousin who's brought up the thing you asked them never to bring up. It does not work on your mother, who invented it, and who will send you for actual oil out of spite.
Wearing it
Our Tel Leva Ja tee takes the whole logic of the phrase and puts it on your chest. To most people it's a clean, minimal oil bottle graphic. To anyone who knows, it's a warning label.
Which makes it the ideal thing to wear to a family gathering. There's a men's version too.
Say it properly
Delivery matters. Tel leva ja is not shouted. Shouting ruins it.
It's said flatly, with a small dismissive wave, ideally while already turning away and doing something else. The turning away is essential. You are not having an argument. You are ending one, and sending them to the shops.
Keep reading
- What does "gadhedo" mean? Gujarati for donkey, and for your favourite idiot.
- What does "thaki gai" mean? For when arguing is simply beyond you.
- What does "bab" actually mean? The other half of the shop: Birmingham's warmest word.
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