French President Emmanuel Macron, during his recent visit to Australia, went viral on social media, when he thanked Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his “delicious” wife for their hospitality!

The mistake could have been a French phrase that was lost in translation. Some people defended him saying that what he meant was “delightful” as “delicieux” means either delicious or delightful. Others felt the French have a strange obsession with food and gastronomy.

It is not known whether there was a fist fight among the leaders of the Free World after the press conference or if everyone diplomatically just made up for the sake of good, brotherly relations between the two countries.

English is a boring language, not poetic or flowery at all like French, or Urdu or Arabic for that matter, which goes into language ecstasy when describing the eyes of a loved one or likening her face to the brightly-lit moon and the twinkling stars.

I am not sure why exactly, but Urdu, and Hindi, dive deeper into the human body to describe the feelings for a loved one. “You are a piece of my heart”, is a common expression (it sounds much more romantic in Urdu or Hindi, not like a medical intern expressing love, when it is said in English).

The heart has always been synonymous with love and affection, so that’s fine if you liken it to your ticker, even if it is barely ticking with the help of cheap stents, but I do not know how the liver came to be so important in romantic situations in the subcontinent.

“You are my life, you are my liver,” may sound ridiculous in English, but women will swoon over you when you say it in Urdu or Hindi.

To solve the mystery why the liver, which should be more important to alcoholics (because of cirrhosis of the liver, due to excessive consumption), became a romantic part of the metabolic life in the continent, I looked up the online Urban Dictionary.

It tries to explain: “Traditionally, since liver has to do with blood distribution and is so important to life, this has become an affectionate way of calling to someone you like or love”.

India even has a famous poet called “Jigar (Liver) Muradabadi (from Moradabad, a very unromantic city in the state of Uttar Pradesh). I am not sure whether like all poets and creative types, he liked to tipple and trip and that’s how got his nom de guerre (French, for an assumed name).

Incidentally, I never heard my parents call each other “my dear liver”, or by some other body parts, but it was disrespectful to call your husband by name, let alone calling him “my pancreas”, so my mother just called him, “hey, listen”. For many years, I did not know my father’s name and since I was living in a patriarchal society in India, such a situation was unheard of. Two things make you a person in the subcontinent — one is the village you were born in, and the other is your father’s name.

People usually add their village name and the father’s name to their name, so your name sounds like a secret code and runs forever on the dotted line, where you have to sign, and you have to turn your name into initials. (I only remember my friends’ names by their initials. “Remember, how RILMPOU and we went to see the cricket match and the tickets were sold out?!”).

(Incidentally, nobody really cares about one’s mother’s name in India, except for two pockets in the states of Kerala and Assam that are matriarchal societies).

There is no way the Indian prime minister would have made such a faux pas and called some first lady, “delicious”, as the Hindi/Urdu equivalent is ‘mazai daar’, which loosely translates to, ‘wow, tasty’.

Mahmood Saberi is a storyteller and blogger based in Bengaluru, India. Twitter: @mahmood_saberi.