We Spoilt NRIs

A few days ago I was at an Indian-Pakistani restaurant sipping tea when my thoughts turned to Gothenburg, Sweden. This one month trip in many mundane ways shook me out of our smugness; a vice many of us living in suburbs of city like San Francisco inadvertently develop.

Well, this is not a flashback of some graying memories of yesteryear that come in black and white shades. In fact, it only dates back to January 2011. 
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The only tint that the city of Gothenburg had at that time was white as all you could see was snow-clad mountains and roads.  Having lived most of my life in subtropical New Delhi and now sunny California it was not a very welcoming sight.

I was only few hours old in the city when hunger pangs lead me to a Swedish restuarant. Bereft of the Swedish vocabulry, the menu or 'meny' made little sense to me. I spent the next 15 minutes communicating with our waitress in sign language only to find out that my only option was a veggie salad.  

As I headed out on streets again, I found an Indian restaurant just few blocks away from our hotel.
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It was the first time in all day that I had seen curly black hair and brown skin clad in Indian attire. Suddenly, the joy of seeing a fellow Indian and speaking my own language became exhilarating.

Back in San Francisco, I never seemed to miss anything Indian. Infact, plethora of everything Indian be it restaurants or grocery stores killed the idea of ethnic diversity, and sometimes made me wary of our desi bhais.

Yet, that day I was thrilled to taste some of the most mundane Indian dishes and hear that polite 'namaste,' the Hindi word, which means greetings or hello.  

Learning The American Ways

A cup of coffee with a friend sparked the memories of those first few days in U.S. when even the most mundane tasks seemed like an enigma. Well, that's what happened with this dear friend of mine when he first ordered a coffee after being in U.S. only for couple of days. 

Like most Indians he expected a hot steaming cup of the soothing coffee with milk and sugar. But it turned out that his cup not only missed milk and sugar but coffee itself! While waiting for his cup to be filled he naively created another conundrum when asked the server for a polythene. What  followed was a set of blank and bewildered looks as the server churned his gray matter to find that word in his vocabulary. 

And ah! that big word decoded into simple three letter word 'bag.' All he needed was the white plastic bag sitting on the shelf. As the soft plastic bag made into his hands, he still wondered if the server had forgotten to pour the aromatic beverage into his mug. Hell No! He hadn't forgotten. It was his job. And another perplexed expression with a tinge of exasperation told him that. It was only a matter of few more seconds when our friend learned the art of coffee-making as he observed other customers pour the brewed black drink into  their cups. 

Most of us have had our little experiences with everyday American terms, my being with the forbidden 'tissue' that can end up getting you a toilet paper or bath tissue instead of a simple napkin.


 

Milk Milk Everywhere

Language can often make for you might want to buy or say something and you do exactly the opposite. And that's what happened with us when we set out for our quest of finding milk or mjolk (the word mjolk has two dots on the letter 'o') as it is called in Swedish.

It so happened that after moving into our hotel in Gothenburg I began missing my 'adarak wali chai,' (ginger tea) and decided to put our electric kettle at work. All we needed was ginger, teabags and milk. Well, the first two came with a wink but for the third there were myriad of options in the mejeri or the dairy section. We had lattemjolk, minimjolk, mellanmjolk and filmellan....and the list goes on.

Without giving much thought I picked up filmellan trusting the cow that was smiling on the can. But it turned out I had misjudged the cow because fil is a yogurt like substance. The first sip told me I had raged a havoc in that little black kettle.

"Uff!" I thought, only if I had looked at the Google translator.