I hear Lapsha
In English, we have a number of phrases which we use when we feel that we are being told something that is untrue, such as:
- having the wool pulled over our eyes;
- having our leg pulled.
Here, there is a similar phrase which can take people by surprise: “having noodles laid on our ears”. The Russian word for noodles, or pasta, is is “lapsha” … so you sometimes hear the something like: “he’s putting lapsha on your ears”, and it is often accompanied by running the hand over the ears as if someone is literally laying boiled spaghetti over the ears.
There’s a popular children’s TV programme with humourous sketches, called “Erelash”, which once included a scene based on this phrase. The programme began many years ago in the days of the Soviet Union and people recognize individual episodes and can recount the storyline and even repeat the script, word for word, amidst bursts of hysterical laughter. Some of the episodes are really very good, imaginative and mildly amusing and occasionally there some which even I find rip-roaringly funny, but, to be honest, quite often, I find that the humour hard to understand … it can rely upon a play of words which passes me by or a typical situation found in everyday life which Russian children would instantly recognise, but foreigners like me do not. The episode about laying lapsha on people’s ears originally fell into this latter category.
It starts with a pupil being asked about why he hasn’t done his homework … and he comes out with some long and involved story, about some great misfortune which occurred the night before. There is nothing unusual about that, it happens all the time in every culture, but the boy actor then takes some boiled spaghetti and starts to lay it over the teacher’s ears … of course, local viewers instantly understood the implications … “he’s fibbing” … but I just thought it was very odd until someone later took the trouble to explain it to me. The graphic imagery brings a smile to faces of those watching. The scene switches to the head teacher’s office, and the teacher is asked to explain something … as she talks away, giving her explanation, she takes some spaghetti and lays it over the principal’s ears … in other words, she too is telling a “white lie” to obfuscate her role in something which is not quite right … and this brings the audience watching at home in their sitting rooms to tittering … look even a teacher can tell fibs when necessary. Once again the scene switches … to a school assembly where the head teacher is giving a talk, and tells how the school is to obtain a new computer lab, complete with the latest, up-to-date, technology and says how wonderful everything is going to be. The final shot in the clip shows serried ranks of school pupils sitting with boiled spaghetti hanging on their ears … and is greeted by guffaws as the credits finally roll.
I used to find the imagery of putting lapsha over the ears quite amusing, and it usually reserved for what could be referred to as “harmless untruths”, “fibs”, “white lies”, or “fanciful excuses” rather than for deliberate untruths and blatant lies, (“… damned lies and statistics”).
One day someone was telling me a story which seemed quite fanciful, and I replied “I don’t know what to believe, whether to believe you or not … you know what I hear, I hear lapsha being laid over my ears.” That brought the conversation to halt … They certainly understood the implications of what I was saying, … that I thought I was being lied to … but I am not sure what surprised them most: that I should say so it so bluntly or that I was familiar with the phrase.
It’s now become one of my stock phrases and people who know me are used to a question like: “Do I hear lapsha?”, and I don’t even have to finish the phrase by adding “… being laid over my ears.”
I mention this because, the other day I took a phone call from someone who was the subject of a con-trick … he had received a phone call saying that he was a “lucky man” … his phone number had been selected in a prize draw and he had won a lottery prize – 20,000 som, (that’s the local currency). The only problem was that before he could collect his prize, he had to pay the pay the tax – 1000 som – and he could do this by paying it into a special account, (… a mobile telephone account – !?!), and it had to be done by five o’clock the next day, or his prize would be forfeit. The problem was that he didn’t have a thousand som at that moment, and he asked if I would lend it to him.
My immediate reaction was: “I hear lapsha“.
I told him that I wasn’t going to lend him the money – and to explain my reasons, I asked him some questions:
- What firm was running this lottery?, had he heard anything about it before, because I hadn’t?, had he called their head office to confirm that they were running such a marketing activity?
- Where was the logic?, they were giving him 20,000 som, but to receive it he had to give them first of all 1000 som.
- What sort of tax was it? – there is no tax on lottery winnings and there is no tax in Kyrgyzstan with a rate of 5%, (but, to be fair, he’s not an accountant or businessman and wouldn’t necessarily know about this), and what sort of tax do you pay through a phone bill?
- Why was it so urgent?, it had to be paid by five o’clock the next day or the prize would be forfeited … this is a typical sign of a scam … offer something that seems to good to be true, but make it urgent and time dependent so that the victim doesn’t have have time to think twice and/or seek advice.
Unfortunately, it was a telephone conversation and there seemed to be no way that I could convince him. He was obviously being carried away by his “good fortune”, not wanting to listen to reason, so I said that I could be wrong, it could be a genuine advertising promotion but I advised him to call the company concerned and check with them … and I also repeated that I wasn’t going to lend him the money, that as far I was concerned it seemed to me that I was hearing lapsha and it was a case of “dengi na veter” – “money being cast to the wind” – if he found a thousand som and used it to pay the “tax”, then it would be the last he would see of it and the last he would hear of his “prize”.
When the conversation finished I mentioned it to the people in my office and was told straight away of two other cases – in one, they were told that they had apparently won a car and in the other the prize was an apartment. Fortunately, neither of them fell for it. I decided to call the company that was supposed to running the lottery and was told in no uncertain terms that it was indeed a con-trick … and in no way should I or my friends pay any money to the perpetrators of the scam.
Apparently, there has been a spate of similar scams … but nobody wants to own up to the fact that they fell for it … so there is very little publicity about such schemes to warn the general population.
I wouldn’t want to imply that this is typical of life here in Kyrgyzstan … indeed, these things happen all over the world … apparently they are often known as variations on the “Nigerian Scam” – which is not really a racial slur … it just that the first time they emerged there were connections with Nigeria … and the name stuck, (… just as the pandemic outbreak of influenza that followed the First World War was called “Spanish Flu” … because that’s where the first cases were reported – and that was it’s only connection with Spain).
Bishkek