Lost in translation

Did you know that Laura pronounced in the Italian way (Low-ra) means penis in Hindi? European Laura that is staying in my guest house did not know that small but relevant piece of trivia either. She figured something was up by all the tittering every time she introduced herself. It was left to the owner of the guest house, a very proper women in her mid 60s to enlighten Laura. To add insult to injury her surname is Kok which bilingual English/Hindi speakers find hysterical. Laura is here for 3 years as a refugee protection officer. As you can imagine, 2 weeks ago she changed her name to Lauren.

No one can understand me on the phone no matter how slowly and clearly I speak. Last week I was speaking to a woman from an affiliate organisation. I had to repeat myself about 6 times and she still didn’t understand what I was saying. Eventually I got in the car and drove all the way across Delhi to meet her in person. The meeting took ten minutes and she didn’t ask me to repeat myself once.

It would be more accurate to say that I was driven. I have a driver; Nerinder. We have a special way of communicating. He speaks Hindi and I speak English, neither of us understands what the other is saying but we both smile and nod. We use lots of charade type hand movements. He picks me up in the morning and takes me the hour to work in West Delhi. He sits and waits for me the whole day (he does not leave the car) and then when I am ready he takes me back again. It’s more affordable to hire him for the day than for the two separate trips to and from work. As you can imagine, this gives me serious working class guilt.

Yesterday I found myself in a situation that highlighted the challenges of not speaking the same language. Before I went to work I moved back to my old guest house - October is a very popular tourist month and my lack of foresight means that I didn't book far enough in advance thus have to move around a bit. Another driver took me to the guest house in a beautiful old Ambassador and then Nerinder picked me up and took me to work. When I got to work I realised that I was without my phone. Why do I always have to be so loskop? I retraced my steps and realised that I had probably left it in the first taxi. However it was on silent which is a very unusual concept in India. Caller tunes are HUGE here and noone wants to go unheard. So, try explaining this to someone that does not speak English. Not easy. It took me about 2 hours to hunt down the original driver and then search his car. To my great dismay, it was nowhere to be found. As I was about to resign myself to the fact that it was gone for good, I felt a vague but distinct vibrating under my hand. It was my phone! It had slipped into the seat lining.