This morning when I woke up I sat down at the table to read my Lonely Planet "Northeast India" guide as I had my morning tea, biscuits (an indian thing, remnant from the british era I believe), and a banana. Baba (Abhijeet's dad) was sitting across from me at the table: knit hat atop his ahead, slipper clad, with a bright pink chadar (Indian shawl) wrapped around his shoulders. He also often has a lungi wrapped around his waist. A lungi is basically a plaid sarong that is very common for men to wear in India, especially around the house. the working masses who spend most of their time out on the street generally wear lungis and wife-beaters all day long (the ultimate in casual attire around here).
Baba is really quiet - doesn't say much, doesn't do much. He often sits quietly at the kitchen table, or at the edge of the bed. He takes a lot of little naps throughout the day and takes his daily walks up and down our short hallway. He likes to look at food items and touch them - he'll pick up fruits and put them down again, sometimes saying the name of them in either Bengali or English, sometimes both.
So this morning he shuffled over to our little fridge (it's red and about waist high, which is pretty typical in India in my experience). We keep the biscuits and fresh fruits there. He took an apple, shuffled over to me and held it out for me to take. The he shuffled back to his chair, sat down and announced something unintelligible. I scrunched my eyebrows in confusion, so he repeated himself with an air of absolute assurance. I then realized he wasn't speaking in Bengali, or at least some of what he was saying was in English. It sounded melodious, a description I do not associate with the English language, but one that is often used to describe the Bengali language. The English words i could decipher from this announcement of his were apple, which sounds a little more like "aaphel' in the Bengali accent, and the word doctor, which in this accent sounds something like "doctaar". So I leaned forward a bit, with confusion written all over my face. So he repeated himself one last time with absolute certainty, projecting his voice in a poetic manner and finishing his sentence with a flourish of his hand and a shifting of his head. "oh!" I exclaimed, "an apple a day keeps the doctor away!" and then I agreed with him by finishing with a gentle "ha" which means yes and doesn't sound anything like one would verbalize the "ha" in American English, which generally comes off as a guffaw, triumphing over another in a bet, or some smug assertion of 'i told you so,' to name a few. Although I'm not a huge fan of apples, after all that endeavor to speak to me and because of his sincere good will, I ate that mealy apple which may not have even been grown in India but very likely had made it's journey all the way here from the states or China or some other distant land.
It's 11 pm here and this hit song, "why this kolaveri di" is resounding throughout our little corner of the neighborhood, no one outside sounds anywhere close to settling down for the night. The song is wildly popular and has definitely gone viral through YouTube. I heard about it through a friend of mine only days before leaving for India. And as I was standing at the gate, on the way here, headed to dubai in the London airport, the Indian man behind me was distractedly, yet superbly, mumbling the song to himself under his breath. And to top it all off, this very morning I read an article about this song in the Kolkata newspaper. The awesome thing is that this song is not in Hindi or Bengali, but in the South Indian language, Tamil, with the Tamil version of Indian English.Fascinating? I certainly think so. Plus the song pretty much rocks, particularly if you can pick up on some of the cheeky cultural references.
This afternoon, while Abhijeet was making lunch in the kitchen and Rebecca was reading in the other room, I walked into the kitchen area to get my India guide book from the table. The cooking area is blocked off by a wall with only a small entry way leading into it. Abhijeet heard my shuffling around and without being able to see who was there, exclaimed in his deep, resounding voice, "howdagaudagaudagaudaah!" And promptly after this unintelligible exclamation, without hesitating a moment to see who it was who had wandered in, translated in his gentlemanly and proper English accent, "will you turn the light on please?" I didn't say a word, I just switched the light on and joined Rebecca in the other room to enjoy a relaxing pre-lunch read.
Not long after, Rebecca and I abandoned our reading to chat. At one point I asked her how one would request a person to turn on the light in Bengali. As Rebecca took a moment to think, abhijeet sauntered in. So I clarified what had happened and imitated how it had sounded to me and how much I wanted to know what he had actually said. We had a good laugh, because the way I imitated it sounded more like an imitation of Tamil. Rebecca patiently translated word for word what Abhijeet had probably said in Bengali, as "otaa bondho kure dao" which can be very loosely but unsatisfactorily translated as, "make that thing go off." In my defense, I can totally see how my inexperienced ear heard this rapid request as "howdagaudagaudagaudaah!" The Bengali language makes most "a" sounds seem like an "o" sound, "t" sound like a version of "d", and "k" sound like a version of the "g" sound.
Today Rebecca and I spent the afternoon doing errands and shopping. It's amazing exploring with someone who already knows the local language, particularly for someone as voraciously inquisitive as me (which others close to me have not failed to express their periodic impatience with -as I'm sure I would too, in their place!) When we go to the open air market and I want to ask the vendors what this or that fruit is called, is it ripe?, how does one know?, is this a fruit that grows in bengal?, and when not- where does it come from? The vendors generally speak a few words of English, about as much as I speak of Bengali, so it's a pretty barren interaction without a translator, at least for the time being. I don't want her to get burned out though, so I'm definitely interested in learning as much Bengali as possible starting now. At least a good assortment of verbs, as I can always use a single verb if need be, to communicate my needs, and then provide the word with the necessary inflections to indicate a question or statement and so on.
Rebecca's really something with languages. She's what they call a polyglot - someone who is multi-lingual and has a knack for languages. She speaks Bengali and Hindi fluently. She knows enough Arabic and Tamil to read and understand novels in those languages. And she knows Icelandic (which she taught herself as a teenager after becoming fascinated with Bjork!) as well as some Spanish. And she definitely has learned more, such as Hebrew and Farsi, although I haven't heard her speak in those languages nor have I caught her reading a complex novel, as I have with some of the other languages. So I can't vouch for her fluency there, but ( my god!) - language makes sense to her, she enjoys learning languages, and loves exploring it's many nuances. So cool! Of the many personal qualities I adore and admire in her as a person, this is a life skill of hers that I am just so completely impressed by and in awe of.
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