Fox in the Hindi-House (Day 9)
My day started with a 9:30am appointment at the American International School of Chennai. The Fulbright office was supposed to send me an air-conditioned cab to use for the day. The driver of said cab was supposed to call my room when he arrived. At 8:50 I got ansy and decided to go downstairs to wait. I found that the cab had been sitting in the hotel parking lot for 30 minutes. It does no good to yell at people here, even if I could decide who was the appropriate person to yell at (driver, concierge, reception people), so I just climbed in. Ah, cool a/c, but to keep it that way means keeping the windows rolled up. Keeping the windows rolled up means quarantining myself with a tribe of mosquitoes that seem to be using the interior of this cab as a brothel. I spend the whole ride to the school alternately swatting them into olivion and covering exposed skin. I'm not yet hallucinating (or am I?) or having alternating hot and cold spells, so either I got them before they got me, or my medicine actually works. Pharmacuetical giants aren't all bad.
So I spend some time talking to the counselor and her son, then give a presentation to a group of students. No sweat. Now the cab take me back to the Fulbright office where we pick up my chaperone, for the next two stops are at women's colleges - Vaishnav College for Women, and Stella Maris College. At both I address large groups of young impressionable ladies. There is much tittering and giggling. I must have done a good job, because by the end they have shed their coy fascades and are catfighting in the aisles over whether I should next show the DVD clip on Fashion Design or on Film & Television. I scan the crowds for billboard girls, but find none.
Visits done, I grab my crap at the hotel and head back to the airport. The flight to Kolkata (Calcutta) is full of children wandering the aisles and making unpleasant noises. I'm really hoping a stewardess will lose control of the dinner cart and knock them over like bowling pins. The landing is heavy and abrupt. Another cab. Whereas previously cabbies have used a morse-code-like tooting of the horn, here they prefer to make it ululate like a distraut Palestinian woman mourning her dead/incarcerated husband. I check in. I do e-mail. I think of beer. Mmmmm, beer.
Today's digression: Hinglish
This may seem very un-PC, but after you've been here awhile you overlook that and just do what works. What I'm talking about is pronouncing things the way Indians do in order for them to understand you. Yes, they speak English, but not your version. Therefore you must adapt, even if adapting feels like tactless mockery at times. Instead of saying you are going to the Hilton, you must say you are going to Hill-Tun, both syllables distinct and equally accented. Then they respond, oh Hill-Tun, why didn't you say so.
So I spend some time talking to the counselor and her son, then give a presentation to a group of students. No sweat. Now the cab take me back to the Fulbright office where we pick up my chaperone, for the next two stops are at women's colleges - Vaishnav College for Women, and Stella Maris College. At both I address large groups of young impressionable ladies. There is much tittering and giggling. I must have done a good job, because by the end they have shed their coy fascades and are catfighting in the aisles over whether I should next show the DVD clip on Fashion Design or on Film & Television. I scan the crowds for billboard girls, but find none.
Visits done, I grab my crap at the hotel and head back to the airport. The flight to Kolkata (Calcutta) is full of children wandering the aisles and making unpleasant noises. I'm really hoping a stewardess will lose control of the dinner cart and knock them over like bowling pins. The landing is heavy and abrupt. Another cab. Whereas previously cabbies have used a morse-code-like tooting of the horn, here they prefer to make it ululate like a distraut Palestinian woman mourning her dead/incarcerated husband. I check in. I do e-mail. I think of beer. Mmmmm, beer.
Today's digression: Hinglish
This may seem very un-PC, but after you've been here awhile you overlook that and just do what works. What I'm talking about is pronouncing things the way Indians do in order for them to understand you. Yes, they speak English, but not your version. Therefore you must adapt, even if adapting feels like tactless mockery at times. Instead of saying you are going to the Hilton, you must say you are going to Hill-Tun, both syllables distinct and equally accented. Then they respond, oh Hill-Tun, why didn't you say so.
posted by Union Station | 11:17 AM
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