PNPC Bengali Style Part 1

I'm starting a new series called PNPC Bengali Style (PNPC means poro ninda, poro charcha, or roughly translates to Gossiping and Bitching about others) for the odd random things I hear around town.

The other day I was swimming and this random lady (RL) comes up to me and this is how the conversation went.

RL : Are you Indian?
Me : No, I'm American.
RL : Where are you from in the US?
Me : New York
RL : What do you do here?
Me : I'm married to a Bengali.
RL : What's his name?
Me : Told her DH's name
RL : Really? I am a Sengupta too! We're in the same caste.
Me : (thinking in my head) Lady...I don't really care about caste...you're mad!

Seriously?! It's a good thing I didn't let on that I speak bangla too! I came home and told this to DH and he just about busted up laughing and had a huge ole grin stuck on his face for some time!

Swimming is going good, I'm sore and that's a good thing, as it tells me I'm pushing myself instead of just letting myself "get by" with the bare minimum effort.

Trolling at a friend's wedding

Saturday night, DH, P and I went to a friend's wedding. We didn't plan to stay long seeing as how we were already late. We meant to pick up DH around 8, but managed to pick him up around 830pm...so off we went.

We went said hello to the bride and groom, and then decided to eat. There was a plethora of foods...biriyani, jeera rice, daal makhani, naan, and lots of other things to eat. My problem with wedding food is that it's normally pure bengali food and it's hard to eat my fill. So, thinking I'd enjoy it, I took some jeera rice (the flavour was a bit overwhelming for me...) and some butter masala paneer. Then I spied some chicken florentine (YES! Some continental food =D)

Well...I went to the counter where they were serving the chicken and they gave me a bit. I asked for more, they said "This is chicken, non-veg" to which I replied "Aaro din" (give me more) and they again replied "But it's chicken." Slightly frustrated at this point I said, "Jaani, aami porte pari, Chicken Florentine lekha achhe" (I know, I can read. It's written Chicken Florentine.)

Then we had more food and left...I ended up coming home and having a maggi at 1am. :-)

Yep, highlight of my night was trolling at a wedding =D

"Speak in hindi!!"

So...I was sitting in the auto today waiting to go to South City and there were only 3 people, and we were waiting on a 4th person. The other 2 people (a guy and I think his girlfriend?) had apparently been waiting for about 15 minutes for the auto to go. I get in and then this is how the conversation went (it was in bangla so this is a translation!)

Guy : "Do we have to wait all day to go?"
Autowallah : "We are waiting for 1 more person. This is how it normally goes."
The guy muttered some comment I didn't catch.
Autowallah : "Well, if it was just you 2 on a fared auto then you would have been gone already"

HAHAHA!

So then his girlfriend said to him, "Well, if you ask stupid questions you'll get stupid answers. She's laughing."
Me: "Auto's never go anywhere unless they have 4 passengers, even the ones from Gariahat."

Girlfriend (as she's feeding him a bite of noodles) : "You are like all other men, you are always eating!"
Boy : "Speak in hindi!"
Me : "Why? I can understand Hindi. And bangla."

LOL Love the surprised look on their face.

Then we had the normal conversation of why I was here, and how long I had been here for.

Seriously, made my day!!!

Only half a Euro Madam...

Today I was waiting on the side of the street with DH waiting for a taxi or a bus or something to take us home. Well, you know how the drill goes, nothing goes as smooth as you want it to in India. All of a sudden this guy comes up and stands in front of me and starts talking.

"Please madam, give me some money for food. I am unemployed and I do not have a job. Please, just one plate of rice, 20 rupees. Only half a Euro."

DH replied not so nicely, "No thanks!" while I stood there staring off to the right in an attempt to ignore this man, because all I wanted to do was say, "If you can speak English that well there is no reason you shouldn't be able to get a job, so why should I give you *MY* money?"

So, then I looked and DH and laughed and said I was going to blog about this. DH's response was "Cholo!" (let's go) and so with his camera in hand, we start following this guy and DH starts snapping his picture. We follow him a distance and DH speeds up and tells me to stay behind so the guy doesn't know we are taking his photo, and tries to get in front of the guy to get a better shot.

Well...just as DH gets in front of the guy, the guy veers off into the bathroom as I am coming up behind him, and so I cross to where DH is and tell him that if he wants a better shot he is going to have to wait until the guy comes out of the bathroom, and he says "Ok, I'll wait. But you get behind, so you don't catch his attention." I went and had an ice cream at the little Kwality cart and sat down and waited. We waited for like 10-15 minutes (and even purchased movie tickets for Sunday LOL) and there was still no sign of him.

We decided to give up and then started walking back towards home to catch something and all of a sudden the guy is right in front of us, I was thinking, "How the hell did we miss him??" LOL

I mean, seriously, this guy didn't look like a beggar. He spoke pretty damn good English too...I was almost tempted to tell him off, but I just ignored him since that tactic works pretty good for me (or the "Kichhu hobe na. Jao!" Nothing happening. Go!). Take a look for yourselves, since DH gladly gave me this photo. :)

Then we are walking further and this guy says to me "Madam, come inside, English movies." Seeing as how every time I go past one of these road side DVD stores this happens, I turned to him and said, "Aapni ki bhabchhen aami shudhu English bujhte pari?" (What do you think I only understand English?) and he looked shocked. DH had kept walking LOL

Dadu and snapping

When I'm at Gariahat and I want some cold water or a cold drink, I usually stop at this one little stall.

There's an old man, Dadu (meaning grandfather) who works there. He's a frail skinny, old man, who is a bit slow in his moves.

Normally I will bring back like 2 cokes, and 1 or 2 bottles of water. Normally if I just get 1 bottle of water he will end up bringing me 2 bottles of water and 1 coke, and I just laugh and ask him to switch it.

Now, the other day I had gone and was picking up my drinks, and there were 2 or 3 people behind me. They can all see that this guy is already helping me, and therefore busy, right?! Well, you would think so, but now, they kept calling to him.

Finally one guy behind me said, "Dadu, aapni ki korchhen?" (Grandfather, What are you doing?"

I snapped at their blatant disrespect of this gentleman, and said, "Kaaj korchhen. Ki aapni dekhte parchhen na?" (He is working. Can you not see that or what?" The guy looked at me, shocked and then shut up. :-)

I don't stand for disrespect of elders, maybe it's not disrespect in their eyes but to me it was, and I had had enough!

So you are a bangali bou?

In Kolkata you take an auto that drives on a certain route, i.e. Ruby to Gariahat or Gariahat to Park Circus or Rash Bihari, with about 3-4 other people. Today I was on my way home from the metro when an old man started asking me questions.

It started because I asked the driver, "Gariahat, koto?" (How much to gariahat?)

The man next to me started with, "You can speak bengali?" in a somewhat surprised voice, to which I replied, "a bit".

OM : Where are you from?

At this point my phone rings and it's DH wondering where I am, so I tell him and then hang up.

Me: US
OM : How long have you been here?
Me : Just about 2 years
OM : Why are you here?
Me : My husband is Bengali
OM : Oh, so you're a bangali bou?
Me : I suppose so, yes
OM : Do you know what bou means?
Me : Yes, wife
OM : How do you like bangali's?
Me : I like them so far (at this point I am a bit annoyed...)
OM : How many months out of the year do you stay in India?
Me : Almost 2 years...

At this point he shuts up and we get out.

It was funny, and a bit annoying but it made me smile! :-)

LOL

p.s. sorry if i forgot any 'B's in this post...my 'b' button is acting up =/

Learning Bangla

FYI : bangla = bengali language, bengali = person of Bengal descent

This is probably one of the hardest blog posts to write, as I'm not entirely sure what angle to write from!!! Learning a new language above the age of 25 (which I am!!) is quite difficult, and that too a Indic language.

I took a 1 year course, 6 months of Junior level, and 6 months of Senior level, at Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Golpark. The classes were held 2 days a week for 1 1/2 hours each. There were about 10-12 people in my Junior class, which consisted of about 5-6 bideshi (meaning foreigner in bangla), from Germany, US, and Canada, and 4 Indians from all over India. Whereas in the Senior class there was only 3 of us, and we were all American (and we knew each other from the previous year).

In the beginning we started by learning to write and read the bangla script. That was an adventure!! DH made me practice over and over while he patiently corrected my mistakes until my script was legible and looked somewhat like...bangla. Also, we learned about conjugating verbs, and the normal grammar. For example, we have a friend who is a probashi bengali (meaning non-resident / migrant bengali) who can speak bangla but he can't read it. We had been waiting for a bus to take us near the airport and some of the buses have the destinations written only in bangla. We were waiting, and he was like come on! The bus is coming. I looked at him and said, "What are you smoking? That bus goes from Tollygunge Metro to Ultadanga. Not to the airport." DH looked at me and started busted up laughing, and then every time a bus comes that is only written in bangla, I will tell him where it goes. =] Because I'm a mean bou-di!

Now, I am always anxious to show off my awesome bangla reading scripts, well...except the conjoining of some letters leaves me confused!! I must admit, I still have problems with the conjugations, but like I keep telling DH and myself that I've only been learning bangla for a year, and I wasn't even fluent in English at age 1!!!

I'm still learning slowly, but I'm to the point where I can understand more than I can speak. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or not, but I can get my point across.

I've had many experiences of shocking and surprising many people with my bangla skills. Once when I was taking a bus home, I was waiting to get down, and the bus driver asked me, "ekhane namben?" (will you get down here?) and to which I replied, "Na, aami opere nambo" (I will get down above, meaning above the circle.) Then the usual went on to be asked, that I knew bangla, and how I learned it, and why I'm here, and how long I've been here. I usually give my standard answers. I usually just say that I learned bangla at Ramakrishna Mission at Golpark, and I'm here because my husband is bengali, and I've been here for about a year and half. It's always a conversation starter when I speak to them in bangla.

Also, one day we had a friend from out of town come to Kolkata and DH and I had decided to pick him up from the airport and then go out for dinner. Usually we are able to get a taxi from the stand in front of our house. Well, this time there wasn't any to be had, so I took a bicycle rickshaw to the crossing. I asked the taxi, "airport jabe?" (will you go to the airport?) naturally he said yes. I got in the backseat and said, "dada, aamar saami pick-up korte hobe. O aamar jonno Silver Spring Club-e dariye achhe, tarpor airport jabo" (meaning Dada, we have to pick up my husband. He is waiting for me at the Silver Springs Club, then I will go to the airport). He said, ok, and off we went. We went off to the area, and DH told us to go through the bus lane, and so we started that way, and the cop told the driver, "jete parben na" (you can't go) and the driver told him that a person was waiting for us. The cop asked, "ke?" (who?) and from the back seat I said, "aamar saami" (my husband) and after seeing me speak bangla the cop, said "jan jan" (go, go). So after successfully picking up DH off we went to the airport!

We also learned how to say certain phrases and some idioms. My favorite being "bhul bhal bhaje kotha bolo na" which roughly translates to "stop talking utter crap!!" 

This school was good for the amount of money we paid, I think we paid less than Rs 150 (less than $5) a month. I will be attending it again to learn hindi.