Misadventures of Language

Language? Yes language… when traveling to foreign lands, it can be real source of adventure or misadventure! I avidly remember an incident from 2004 when my brother and I went to Bangkok, my first step out of India. The language barrier came to show its ugly face when our tuktuk (auto rickshaw) took us to a brothel, whereas we wanted to go for scuba diving. It was so funny trying to explain scuba diving with our body language. Had there been an open sewer there – as we have many in Delhi – I could have explained our intent for a deep dive much easily!

Keeping my lingual experiences in perspective, I was quite excited about my Euro trip. Each country en my route had different codes for communicating. I obviously had to prepare for safeguarding myself against any situation of deadlock in communication. Although quite difficult for me to choose between the two, I would still not like to drink wine, when all that can satisfy me is plain water. Only 12 hours to go, and I had still not started my packing; I was wandering at ‘Nai Sarak’, scouting for language aids. Luckily I found Rick Steves’ phrase books in Spanish, Italian and French. I was happy that these books could save me from deadlock of communication, but I didn’t know that nothing could save me from miscommunication!

My first brush with miscommunication was in Barcelona, an extremely vibrant city, with people around till late hours. Around 11:30 PM after landing, I was looking for my hostel, which was located in a kind of down town. While crossing a lane, I saw a group of Nigerians sitting very close to each other; it seemed as if they were consuming drugs. I tried to overlook them, but suddenly, one of them stood up, came to me, and without uttering anything, touched his nose twice while nodding his head. I was hell scared on the very thought of even talking to a druggy in a foreign country. I thought he was asking whether I needed any drug. I just moved on without responding. Later, I passed through the same spot again, and this time, the same guy asked whether I was looking for any particular location. I said yes, and he said “I asked you the same earlier also?”… Oh my God, what a classic misunderstanding. I didn’t tell him what I had thought but I did become his friend till the time I stayed in that location.

The next big thing happened in Florence, Italy. Italian being one of my favorite cuisines, I was always excited about trying traditional food in Italy.

At a family run, non-touristic restaurant (you would hardly find people speaking English at non-touristic spots), I ordered ‘Bocconcinni’ on the recommendation of a waitress. Although I insisted for garlic flavored Bocconcinni, the waitress convinced me that I should go for the plain one to taste the most authentic version of it. And when this thing came on my table, I was awed. How could I even think of eating balls of mozzarella cheese, stir fried in just tomato gravy!!!

Perhaps many such instances happened during my entire Euro Trip; today I remember them all as funny situations. I am now not scared of misadventures of miscommunication, because they make the perfect memories.

A minority...

Mind it you cannot earn it, you are born with it! I am talking about the minority tag, a priced asset in India, which entitles a person to numerous sops thrown by our vote-bank driven governments. Being a minority in India might mean a relatively comfortable life for one but it isn’t the same abroad. The fact is that everybody is a minority in one or the other way, a thinking that got reinforced when I traveled to Europe.

After my flight landed in my stopover at Helsinki, Finland, I started having a strange feeling. At the Airport, lot of activities were going on at the same time - people walking, kids playing, groups of friends chattering, waiters serving food and so on; but I was missing something, I was away from my fraternity. I was getting slightly uncomfortable, not because of any jetlag, but because of this odd feeling. And this feeling only got exaggerated each time I looked myself in the mirror. I was different!

The big blow – I was in the land of Caucasian (white) majority, wandering with a minority tag. No certificate or announcements required; my overall identity and appearance were testimony to my status. Each time I got closer to nonnative culture, language, people, traditions, and food, I felt myself much glued to this tag.

I was wondering whether I would get any special treatment or attention as these people get when they visit India. I don’t know if I was also termed something, the way they are termed ‘Goras’ in most of India, but I did observe that many times people avoided sitting next to me in buses & planes and also avoided making eye contact for longer.

Despite having the taste of minority, I realized that not everybody was same. I got opportunities to talk to people, make friends and share unique perspectives, many times because of my ‘m’ status. People were indeed interested in knowing about where I came from i.e. India and its diverse culture. I was always very excited while telling them that they would not believe that India is one, if they had seen all its parts. By the time my trip was about to finish, I was quite comfortable carrying my identity in the land of strangers. I had never felt so strongly attached to my Indian identity.