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...]