Parikramaa 2012 - this weekend at Balgandharva, Pune! … [Read more...]
Arbitrary Right
A little girl in my dance class was confused."Which is your right hand?" I asked."This one?" she suggested, tentatively, raising her left hand."No," I said, gently, used to these problems. "That's your left hand. The other one is your right.""NO!" she said, crossly. "That's your right."I smiled and demonstrated to her, "This is my right side; this is my left. That is your right side; that is your left."The little girl turned around so that both of us were facing the same direction. "Now which is my right?" she asked, triumphant at the thought that she had fooled me.I held her right hand. "This one.""How?" she moaned, upset with how fickle I was. "You said that window was my right hand!" … [Read more...]
Burggarten, bitte
A lovely lady on the train to Vienna told us we must go see the Burggarten, a rose garden.In our attempt to put to use our practically non-existent German, we greeted an old gentleman on the road and asked him sweetly, "Burggarten, bitte?"He launched into a long speech in German. We listened, nodded appropriately and made polite noises. Once he had finished explaining, we said our 'Danke' and followed him across the road. That much, we had understood.We stood around noting various 'interesting' things around, letting him go ahead. We then discreetly asked someone else.To this day, we wonder what the gentleman explained to us in such great detail. The rose garden was straight ahead. … [Read more...]
Cycle Rickshaw
When I went to Kolkata for my entrance exams, I stayed with a friend's family. The first day there, Uncle took me in a cycle rickshaw. He warned me, "Don't pay more than 8 rupees to these rickshaw-wallahs. They'll charge you anything. They know you don't come from Calcutta."I listened and nodded and cringed as the rickshaw-wallah bumped us over steep slopes and potholes. His lungi was torn. He was barefoot.Uncle dropped me at the university and went home.To get home myself, I diffidently approached a cycle rickshaw. If I knew my way home, I know I would simply have walked. "Golf Green?" I asked, hopefully.The man lowered his eyes. Realising I definitely did not speak Bangla, he said for me in Hindi, "Bees (20) rupaya."I nodded gratefully. I cringed and clenched my hands as he laboured all the way home.When I reached, Uncle asked how much I paid."Eight rupees," I said, … [Read more...]
On Being Old
My grandmother was very ill, and a friend was talking to me about how difficult it was to see my grandmother like that.A little girl, one of my students, was listening to the conversation. Once my friend had left, she asked me, "Miss, what happened to your mother?""Nothing happened to my mother," I replied, smiling."Then who was Auntie talking about?""My grandmother."She looked at me with big, round eyes. "Your grandmother is still alive!?""Yes!" I replied, surprised. "All four grandparents are alive." Realising that I was lucky in this respect, I asked, "Are yours alive?""Of course!" she said with a puzzled shrug. "But I'm young!"I, on the other hand, was 24 years OLD. … [Read more...]
How do we go to Olympia, please?
My sister and I stood at the little kiosk on the little platform at Patras station. We had our passports, as always, and our Eurail passes and all our money. We knew how to say 'thank you' in Greek, but that was it. We had not heard of Patras until we tried finding cheap ways of getting to Greece.We were seasoned communicators, though, having travelled through Italy with just a few words of Italian. So we went quite confidently to the ticket booth at the station to find out what our options were. We wanted to go to Olympia and to Delphi, but as students on a crazily low budget, we needed to consider carefully.Armed with clear speech and hopeful-friendly smiles, we asked the gentlemen at the kiosk, "Hello, how do we get to Olympia?"Utter silence.My sister and I exchanged glances. Non-communication was not new to us. How could we ask it better?Before we could figure it out, the … [Read more...]