Bandar Mama Pahan Pajama
Hindi Nursery Rhyme
Original Lyrics
Hindi script
बंदर मामा पहन पजामा,दावत खाने आए,ढीला कुरता, टोपी, जूता,पहन बहुत इतराए।
रसगुल्ले पर जी ललचाया,मुँह में रखा गप से,नरम नरम था, गरम गरम था,जीभ जल गई लप से।
बंदर मामा रोते रोतेवापस घर को आए,फेंकी टोपी, फेंका जूता,रोए और पछताए।
Romanized (pronunciation)
Bandar mama pahan pajama,Dawat khane aaye,Dheela kurta, topi, joota,Pahan bahut itraaye.
Rasgulle par ji lalchaya,Munh mein rakha gap se,Naram naram tha, garam garam tha,Jeebh jal gayi lap se.
Bandar mama rote roteWapas ghar ko aaye,Phenki topi, phenka joota,Roye aur pachtaaye.
English Translation
Uncle Monkey put on his pyjamasAnd came to eat at a feast,A loose kurta, a cap and shoes,He put them on and swaggered about.
His appetite went after a rasgulla,He popped it in his mouth in one go,It was soft, it was hot,And his tongue was scalded in a flash.
Uncle Monkey, crying and crying,Came back home again,Threw off the cap, threw off the shoe,And wept, and was sorry.
Translation Notes
Vocabulary
बंदर (bandar) - monkey मामा (mama) - mother's brother, maternal uncle पजामा (pajama) - loose drawstring trousers, the source of English "pyjamas" दावत (dawat) - a feast, a meal you have been invited to ढीला (dheela) - loose कुरता (kurta) - long collarless shirt टोपी (topi) - cap जूता (joota) - shoe इतराए (itraaye) - showed off, strutted रसगुल्ले (rasgulle) - rasgulla, a syrupy cheese sweet ललचाया (lalchaya) - was tempted, craved मुँह (munh) - mouth नरम (naram) - soft गरम (garam) - hot जीभ (jeebh) - tongue फेंकी (phenki) - threw पछताए (pachtaaye) - regretted, was sorry
Grammar Notes
पहन as a shortened participle: पहन पजामा means "having put on pyjamas". The full form would be पहनकर, but rhymes routinely drop the कर, and the bare stem still carries the sense of one action finished before the next begins.
Gender agreement in the last verse: फेंकी टोपी and फेंका जूता sit in the same line with different endings, because टोपी is feminine and जूता is masculine. Two clothing items, two verb forms, one line. It is the clearest gender drill in any Hindi nursery rhyme.
जी as the seat of appetite: रसगुल्ले पर जी ललचाया does not say the monkey wanted the sweet. It says his जी, his inner self or appetite, was tempted at the sweet. Hindi often makes the feeling the subject and leaves the person out of the grammar entirely.
Reduplication: नरम नरम is "ever so soft", गरम गरम is "piping hot", and रोते रोते is "while crying and crying". Doubling a word intensifies it or stretches it across time, and this rhyme uses the trick three times in six lines.
Sound words plus से: गप से and लप से turn a noise into a manner. गप is the sound of a swallow, so गप से means "in one gulp"; लप is a flash, so लप से means "in an instant". Any Hindi noise word can be turned into an adverb this way.
History and Meaning
A monkey dresses up for a party, swaggers around in a borrowed looking outfit, spots a rasgulla, swallows it whole and burns his tongue. He goes home in tears and throws his fine clothes on the floor. Three verses, one small disaster, and no moral spelled out anywhere, which is why Indian children have kept singing it.
Origins
Traditional, with no verified author. The rhyme is printed on Indian parenting and children's poetry sites as a standard nursery poem, always without a byline, and it appears in most published round ups of Hindi बाल गीत (bal geet, children's songs).
One complication is worth stating plainly. The Hindi magazine site Webdunia carries a poem with the same opening line under the byline of Kshitija Saxena, but the text there is a different poem: the monkey goes to the market with money in his pocket and burns his tongue on a jalebi rather than a rasgulla, and the middle verse is entirely rewritten. That looks like a contributor reworking a rhyme everybody already knew, not the source of it. The version sung in classrooms, and the one printed here, circulates unattributed.
So the page carries no author and no year. A named byline on one rewritten variant is not evidence for the original.
Why is the monkey called "mama"?
मामा (mama) means a mother's brother specifically, and Hindi rhymes hand out kinship titles freely. The moon is चंदा मामा in Chanda Mama Dur Ke, a cat is often बिल्ली मौसी (mother's sister), and here the monkey gets promoted to uncle. The effect is affectionate and slightly comic. An uncle is family, so a child is allowed to laugh at him.
It also sets up the joke. Uncles are supposed to be the dignified ones. This one puts on a cap and shoes, shows off, and then cries all the way home.
Who wrote Bandar Mama Pahan Pajama?
No verified author is known, and the rhyme is treated as traditional. A differently worded version on Webdunia carries a contributor byline, but that text is not the one children sing and there is no publication that shows where the familiar verses came from.
What is a rasgulla?
A rasgulla is a ball of fresh cheese curd boiled in sugar syrup, served swimming in the syrup and eaten cold or warm. It is soft enough to swallow in one mouthful, which is precisely the monkey's mistake, and it holds heat well inside, which is the other half of his mistake. Substituting any other sweet would break the joke.
Meaning
The rhyme is a small lesson in greed and in showing off, delivered without a single instructive line. Nobody tells the monkey he was vain. He simply dresses up, grabs, gets burned, and throws the finery away himself. The clothes come off in the last verse because they were never really his in spirit, and the child listening works that out without help.
The sound does as much work as the story. गप से and लप से are noise words: गप is the gulp going in, लप is the scald arriving. Putting them at the end of the two middle lines makes the whole verse move at the speed of the accident.
Lyrics from nurseryrhymes.info