Abi Hindi Katam

Now Hindi Finish.

Here's the thing, I could have put this toddler-type sentence together last week, before I spent the rupees to be taught bad Hindi-Urdu-Nepalese-MishMash. Vanessa and I met early this morning to try and figure out from her notes what the formulas were for all the tenses we whipped through - Present Indefinite all the way to Future Indefinite.

It nearly gave her a brain annuerysm as she tried to figure it out and teach me. I spaced out during the last class yesterday morning and was like, if this guy gives me another exercise to do I will freak out. I missed one class from being sick with a stomach that reached all the way back to Pushkar, and when i would flip through my notes, Mister would say "Huh, you don't know 'she'. You forgot He? Huh."

He had this very odd habit of saying "huh" - it was partially nasal and partially aspirated and 100% annoying. I think it meant "okay" or "yes something", but not really - I could think it was funny at first, but after you've decided you want to murder someone, nothing they do is charming or funny anymore. Weird, huh?

Before Vanessa arrived, Ilu at Little Buddha tried practising Hindi with me this morning - asking me the real brain teaser - where are you from? I did not understand. Hello! He says - "I see you in class there every day - what you learn?" What could I say? All in all I'm just another brick in the wall? Oh there's some proverbs translated into Hindi like: a poor carpenter blames his tools, but much like the translation of Rome wasn't built in a day, where Vanessa and I could find no evidence of the word Rome or day, some things don't translate. Or in the case of what I understood from this man: kuch nahee. Nothing.

There were two other girls learning in the time slot after us, and they were ESL, or possibly E4thL, and the teacher was bahut ESL, and they thought he was great, until one of them showed her Indian friend her notes and her friend told her, "this isn't Hindi, this is some Hindi, some Urdu, and possibly some Nepalese."

Vanessa reported this to me and decided that after we made our notes cohesive, we would do examples for each tense and quiz ourselves. After 2 hours of notes and talking about the meaning of life according to us (no disrespect your Holiness!) and everything in-between, I'm about to go to the bathroom when Vanessa checks her new Colloquial Hindi book and says "We're screwed." She explains how the tense we were working on is not translated correctly. And the waiters look at our text and can't understand what it means, and they have been telling us different words than the ones we have written down, day after excruciating day.

Vanessa: Oh my god! The difference between what this sentence is saying it is and what it really is is the difference between "I'm going to eat" and "I blew up a house last year."

Okay, so here's the scene now, I'm sitting at the internet, sad and a little lonely, having just said good-bye to Vanessa, on her way back to Bangalore. I can hardly believe we met less than a week ago, and we will meet again when she comes to Vancouver, so her goodbye was bahut bidiyay (perfect) "I'll see you soon."

I'm also laughing to myself, alot, going through my notes from our Hindi class. I should clarify, I'm mostly alone, the way one can be so alone in an internet place with 4 guys, all Indian sitting around and playing on all the other computers (Yes, they work here.) All of you who have travelled to bharat will understand, or as Vanessa said one day, "You know - how one guy will fry an egg and four guys will watch him do it." And I keep laughing, and for the 14th time, I kid you not, they have played James Blunt's You're Beautiful.

And I'm a little sad, but I am laughing a lot. An hour ago, I stood on a swinging steel bridge over the Ganges in the moonlight, while the wind whipped up so much that there were waves on the river. I know, me very lucky, some might say bahut lucky.

On the other side of Laxman Jhulla, the steel and concrete bridge that swings in the wind, Vanessa handed me a cd with all the hits from all the Shah Rukh Khan movies (one of India's Tom Cruises, they appear to have 2) including: Om Shanti Om! Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, plus the fabulous Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, which you'll all remember as The Braveheart blah blah blah.

I mean, maybe we should have clued in when we would ask:

"How do you say 'bus'?"
"Bus."
"How do you say 'school'?"
"School."
"How do you say 'kitchen'?"
"Kitchen."

The last one we made a fuss about and got "Rasor Gar" - but like, for all we know, this could be the way they say kitchen in a remote village in Pakistan, where it could also mean "hole with chappati cooking fire in it". Or maybe it's the way they said it in Persia in the 14th century. At least I know I'll be useless in 3 countries with my Hindurdulese. I'm signing up for Esperanto when I get back.

Well, truly we knew he was a terrible teacher, so it seems like just one of those things, we were just destined to meet this way, in a Hindi class under a tarp at Freedom Cafe, me and the Italian-mother-Gujarati-father bahut sundar gal, aur hosey-something, the word for smart, she'll know the one I'm talking about (bilkul mira dost?)

So, off I go, to wake up with no class or Hindi practice to look forward to tomorrow. Good news is the stomach's better, I only look 3 months pregnant now as opposed to six. Yoga, what yoga? You try lying on a pumpkin and moving into upward dog.

And, it's only phir milenge, which we found out is "meet" - as in "we'll meet again", though it's translated for Westerners as "see you later."

I'll leave you all on this note because I have laughed bahut over this and the "I blew up a house last year" exchange.

Vanessa: At least he didn't perv out on us.
Eufemia: Uhm, he put his arms around us in the photo*. And he tried to hug you.
(*This is simply not done here, at all. One has to try and act "casual" and "groovy" - which is not easy for an uptight fella from a no-contact-till-you're-married-culture to do. They don't shake hands with women. They don't hug. In some places, they are not allowed to speak during the "Will this be the one?" marriage interview conducted by family members on behalf of the couple. And plus, his hands were too low for the teacher - student sitch, as Vanessa would say. Would say, did we cover that tense?) I digress! Back to:
Vanessa: At least he didn't perv out on us.
Eufemia: Uhm, he put...And he tried to hug you
Vanessa: I know. Fuck.