Tag: india

  • Upper class travel

    There is a popular story in India about Sudha Murthy, the wife of the software billionaire Narayan Murthy and mother in law of ex British prime minister Rishi Sunak.

    The Murthys have retained their humility despite their immense wealth, endearing them to the Indian public. Once, Sudha was standing in line at the business class check-in for some international flight out of an Indian airport. As always, she was dressed in a plain, unassuming cotton saree. The person behind her is said to have told her,

    “Ma’m, the economy line is over there.”!

    So much for making assumptions and the symptoms of unconscious bias. But these things happen to everyone. It happened to me as well. My only excuse is that I was still a young lad of 19 at the time.

    I had gone to spend my Dusserah holidays with my sister in Kasaragod. Just like the students of today, the students of the 70s were also skint. We travelled third class and didn’t make a reservation just to save a few rupees. The journey lasting two nights and 3 days from Calcutta to Kasaragod in an unreserved third class compartment on an Indian train of the 70s was something else. If you were lucky, you could occupy the luggage rack and get some sleep. If not you perched with half a bum at the edge of a seat originally designed for three but usually occupied by six, sorry six and a half. If you got up you lost your seat. If you left your patch of luggage berth to use the toilet, someone else occupied it. The Railways went to great lengths to ensure the facilities were functional and devoid of any vestige of comfort. The seats were hard wood with no upholstery.

    So, imagine my delight when my brother in law surprised me by gifting me a first class ticket for the return journey to Calcutta. As I was boarding the empty compartment which proudly displayed my name among a printed list of privileged first class passengers, he advised me,

    “Don’t let all and sundry get into the first class.”

    First class and third class were like heaven and hell. As the inferior classes filled up, some people try to barge into the first class. My brother in law probably had this in mind when he advised me. But discretion is not an attribute associated with 19 year olds. I took his counsel to heart and decided to implement it without fear or favour.

    I was the only occupant in a coach that comprised some five or six spacious cabins with their own individual doors and plush cushioned interiors. Most cabins had four berths while some were coupés with two berths preferred by honeymooners and other amorous couples.

    The train arrived at Payyannur, approximately an hour later. I was walking the corridor determined to deny entry to anyone who tried. I noticed someone trying to open the rear door and promptly locked it from the inside using the heavy steel latches provided. A young gentleman with a very severe moustache looked quite puzzled and upset when he saw what I had done. He was accompanied by a whole bunch of soldiers in military green uniform and boots and all. Then he said with some urgency in his voice,

    “Please open the door.”

    The train was scheduled to stop there only for a short time. I simply shook my head. The conversation was monosyllabic.

    “No!”
    “No?” The soldiers joined their leader in a chorus of incredulity.
    “No.” I was firm.

    There was no time to argue. The gentleman and his platoon ran to the other end of the coach. They ran fast and in step. The sound of their boots on the concrete platform, loud and rhythmic, evoked visions of galloping wild stallions. I outran them but from the inside and locked the front door as well.

    “Open the bloody door,” the distressed passenger was red with all the running and uncontrolled fury. I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t go to his own second or third class compartment. Nevertheless, I owed him an explanation, I thought. So I said,

    “Ayyoo, this is first class!”

    He replied,

    “Do you think only you can travel by first class? Open the door NOW!”

    The train was hooting, ready to depart. I let him in. He was a serving Captain travelling on a warrant issued by the Indian Army. He had more rights to first class travel than I did. He was traveling to Calcutta as well. We exchanged addresses before we parted.

    Only last week, my sister was traveling from London to Bangalore via Frankfurt. Her flight was late getting into Frankfurt and she was worried she was going to miss the connecting flight. She arrived at the departure gate and pushed through a large throng of people waiting at the counter.

    “Excuse me, excuse me,” she said as she inched her way frantically to the front of the crowd. Then someone in a wrinkled old kurta told her,

    “We’re all waiting for the same flight.”

    “But I am in business class,” my sister insisted.

    “We’re all business class,” said the kurta man! It transpired he was traveling with his wife, a famous Bollywood singer.

    So, the moral of the story is – I don’t know what it is, but I just love telling these funny stories! 😊

  • Speaking like a native

    Yesterday, I was asked to teach English to a student from the Middle East. He has good spoken English skills and so I asked him,

    “What is your final goal with the English lessons?”

    “To be able to speak like a native,” he responded.

    My first reaction was panic. That’s because I’m a very literal person. I take most things literally and often miss the figurative meaning of things. I nearly told him that I could certainly teach him to speak like a native but with an Indian accent.

    This is not a new problem. As a 14 year old, I opted for Higher Hindi in school. We had moved to Delhi from Kerala and the only Hindi I knew was to ask someone’s name and their age (तुम्हारा नाम क्या है? तुम्हारी उम्र क्या है?) The other option was to take Higher Sanskrit. But Sanskrit was taught in Hindi and my young mind decided that I would be dealing with a double jeopardy by opting for Sanskrit.

    How wrong I was! Hindi was an extremely hard language to score. Even the locals struggled to get above 50%. Sanskrit on the other hand was a doddle. The lowest mark anyone got was 60%. Anyway, my Hindi learning curve was so steep that I often fell off.

    The thing that got me was the concept of metaphors and sayings which make use of them. And there were several. One of them, ऊँट के मुँह में जीरा (‘oont ke mooh mem jeera’) or a cumin seed in the mouth of a camel, confounded me. Once we were told to make a sentence that illustrates the meaning of this saying. So, I made up this elaborate story about a Bedouin Arab and his camel sweltering in the desert heat for days on end until they reached an oasis whereupon he fed the camel a single cumin seed and the camel remarked with disdain, “a cumin seed in the mouth of a camel?”

    I got zero.

    There were other sayings like Gangaram went to Ganga and Jamunadas went to Jamuna which basically means (I figured this out after I had failed Hindi), everyone went his own way. I blush to remember the story I made up about that one with similar end results.

    Zero.

    It took me some time to understand the concept of metaphors. These days when people ask me to do little consultancy jobs but offer peanuts as remuneration, I say to them, “Are you offering a cumin seed to a camel?” Even non Hindi speakers instinctively understand me. All I can say is, some crucial part was missed when I was being put together.

    Anyway that’s water under the bridge, so to speak (you see I understand the concept now). But I must’ve taken my metaphors too seriously. Just the other day my friend Tom was describing a mutual friend,

    “I just love Dan,” he says, “he’s so sweet. Such a decent chap. Butter wouldn’t melt ..”

    The butter bit was new to me. Never having heard the expression before, I researched it and asked a few of my friends including a grammarian. The conclusion was that Tom was using the expression incorrectly. The expression, ‘butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth’ implies that the person comes across as sweet and decent but deep inside he’s a bit of a meanie.

    The next time, I met Tom over a coffee, I asked him,

    “You know the other day you were talking about Dan and how butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth?”

    “Yes?”

    “Do you know what ‘butter wouldn’t melt’ really means?”

    “Oh yeah. It means he’s a sweet chap.”

    “No, it means the opposite. Though I know what exactly you mean, someone else may completely misunderstand you.”

    Tom was not happy with me and accused me of challenging him and informed me that he’s been speaking English all his life and expressions have to be understood by the context they’re used in and so on. We argued a bit. I told him that with this particular expression he’s been using it the wrong way all his life, that figurative expressions relying on metaphors cannot be context sensitive because that would make the English language unusable etc. Tom stopped talking to me.

    Indians are quite sensitive about their English proficiency. You could correct someone’s Hindi or Tamil or any of the Indian languages that happen to be their mother tongue. But correct their English and you’re in trouble.

    ‘Don’t you know English?’ is one of the major insults you can inflict on an Indian. Colonial hangover, what else? But I never imagined an Englishman could get upset when his English is corrected. I had forgotten there’s no colonial effect in England. The Roman conquest was way back in the forgotten past.

    Coming back to my student, I will try and speak with a neutral accent but apologies in advance if I don’t teach you a posh accent. You will not speak like an Etonian but like an alumnus of Kendriya Vidhyalaya. On the brighter side, you’ll be able to communicate seamlessly with 1.4 billion Indians with the accent that you’ll imbibe from me.