A theory of communication

A: It's incredible how you guys manage to communicate with your bai. She speaks only Telugu, and none of you speak Telugu.
B: Ya. It is ok most of the time. We just need to tell her how many cups of tea she has to make in the morning and how many chappatis  for lunch.
A: But how does it work out when she has to tell a more complex thing. Like just now when she was telling you this story about why she came late and you had no bloody clue what she was talking about.
B: Haha. That's why I asked C to listen to her. He knows a bit more Telugu than me but he can also have a hard time understanding her.
A: I have a theory! When she tells a story, you try to pick up certain keywords that you understand and try to construct a story of your own. If the story you construct makes sense, you think that you know the story when you could be entirely wrong.
B: Now also, all I got was a few words - she mentioned something about keys and some money but I could not make any sense out of it.
A: Maybe you don't have enough data points to construct the story. If you had to plot the deviation from the truth of the story you were trying to construct, it will form a straight line if it makes sense. If it was the exact story she was telling, it would be the x-axis. Otherwise, it will have a slope.

C enters

B: What is she saying?
C: She says she fainted on the way back from the market and could not find her purse later. It must have fallen down somewhere. She had some Rs 100 in her purse and our room key. She had to go back find the purse again.
B: That's how she got late.
A: I wonder if you understood everything she said.
C: Haha. I could not make out everything. This may not be the complete story.

Doorbell. C exits to answer.

B: I wonder how this fits into your theory.
A: I guess he must have got those keywords - market, Rs 100, purse, room key etc. And maybe some actions too. At least the story is believable!
B: Maybe the plot is a straight line in this case. But it could have a slope.
A: When you try to fit in the rest of the missing stuff, if you make a plot, it will certainly reflect your understanding. Like if it comes out as a straight line, you think you are getting the story. It is when suddenly one point deviates from the curve that you realize something is wrong with your understanding.
B: What if the plot is a smooth curve and not a straight line?
A: No idea. I am guessing as long as it is smooth, it will not really make a difference.

C re-enters

C: I know the full story now. She went to the market to buy some vegetables. On the way back she realized that she had left her purse at the groceries'. She had our room key and Rs 100 in her purse. She rushed back at the groceries' and asked for her purse. The guy at the groceries' told her she didn't leave any purse but she was confident she did. She finally asked him to give back the key at least. The guy did just that.

One among strangers

If there is one thing that brought me joy more than anything else, it was disappearing into the crowd - getting to meet myriads of people in their myriads of moods. Gokul, the painter and teacher who was kind enough to gift me a painting. His nephew, who had never visited Pune and wanted to do so because he had heard so much about the Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations there. The two brothers from Toranmal in Nandurbar district who had traveled over 300 kms to visit a hospital. The old Belgian lady in Dharamsala who followed her master across countries. The auto-rickshaw driver who was kind enough to oblige when I asked him to take me to the best saste me tikau restaurant in Aurangabad, and who waited till my meal was over because he wanted to know if I liked the food ! The Tibetan who talked about everything under the sun at a tea shop and who later ensured I took something as a memento from the place. The girl in blue dress who I mistook for a Spanish tourist, then replied in chaste Hindi when I talked to her and turned out to be an Indian from California. The two kids who guided me with the light from their cell-phones inside the dark stairs of a fort. The Tibetan momo-making instructor who taught me how to eat momos, and who, with a breath of sadness, explained how they had to India to escape Chinese atrocities. The guy who mistook me for a Korean and gave me a lift on his bicycle for over a kilometer. The American lady who had been a teacher in Thailand for the past 10 years and was taking a vacation in Dharamsala. The hotel boy who sneaked in beer and chicken for me in a Jaipur hotel. The kind people who treated me like family during my stay in Hampi. The three friends who were drunk/stoned like fuck and provided wholesome entertainment for one entire afternoon in Mussoorie. Every couple, children and family who agreed to pose for photographs.

I owe my sanity to each one of them. I admit it was by no means an easy thing to do. I had no plan of action - call it a sense of adventure or sheer silliness! But it surprisingly turned out fairly well in the end. I used my cellphone and the internet to stay in touch with people I knew, but it was pretty scarce. I was alone otherwise and I had my books to keep me company. I caught up with my reading for a whole year during the trip. Here was I who had read about 3 books the previous year. In the trip alone, I ended up gobbling up some 6 of them. Books were definitely a faithful companion during the trip.

I sometimes wonder how it would have gone had I taken the trip with a bunch of friends. A lot of people have asked me about that too - why I did it alone. I don't have a good answer to that. Perhaps it could have been a lot more fun and more replete with activities. While being alone, I spent a lot of time just sitting around ruminating or just reading a book at some secluded place -  not really doing anything. This, and having no plans was in a way quite liberating and I doubt if going with a bunch of friends would have given me that. That being said, I went with a bunch of friends to Kasauli before I moved on from Delhi to elsewhere and it was a pretty amazing trip. (Except for the stupid cable car for which we had to part with 500 bucks each!) But I doubt if I could have enjoyed dragging along with them for a full month or more. I could be completely wrong about that. Perhaps we should plan a trip to prove me wrong. Or right.

 

Ek seedha saadha sadhu

"Kitna hua?", I ask the driver at the end of the journey in the Vikram.
"Fifty," he replies.

The sadhu perched beside him in the front looks at me and shakes his head silently. I know what he means and stare at him for a few moments. He puts up three of his fingers.

"Tees hi dete hai hamesha." I didn't tell him it was my first ride in a Vikram in that route.

"Nahi. Fifty lete hai."

The sadhu turns to the driver and tells him something that I cannot hear.

"Yeh lelo," I tell him giving 35 rupees worth of notes. "Is se zyaada nahi de raha." I see the sadhu continuing to talk to the driver as I walk away.

***

The government had created taps of water virtually everywhere along the roads to facilitate pilgrims. One sadhu is cleaning his feet with water from one of these Another one across the road is looking over something cooking on a temporary fire that was created using dried twigs from the forest. As I walk past them, the one who was washing his feet asks, "Maharaj, dal ubal gaya kya?"

***

"Ek chai milega?" I ask no one in particular in the tea shop. There is a middle-aged man and a woman sitting on a bench. An older man is sitting on a bench, sipping tea. A teenage girl is combing her hair nonchalantly. I fail to figure out who the owner of the tea-shop is.

"Ek chai banado, " the middle-aged guy tells the teenage girl. "Baitho, " and he points to a seat beside him. I thank him and sit down.

I see that the girl is in no mood of making the tea as I observe. Probably afraid that her hair will dry up as she continues to comb it.

"Japan? Korea? " the guy seated beside me asks as if to divert my attention.

"Korea," I replied and added, "South" to make it more convincing.

The guy nods in approval.

Meanwhile, a sadhu arrives asking for tea. However, his lack of teeth, misshapen mouth and a possibly faulty vocal chord have conspired against him to produce just a wheeze of a noise instead of a well-formed question. The girl who probably has seen him more than I have mimics him. I realize the girl has a surprisingly grungy voice making the mimicry pretty successful. Or at least as funny.

The sadhu takes out a steel cup of his own and gives it to the girl. The girl tells him, "Give me money. Fast. Fast." The sadhu lets out a sentence in the form of another wheeze as the girl continues to mimic him and laughs. The sadhu sits down on the road. There is a dog playing around and the sadhu prods the dog with a tong that he brought along with him.

"Kya kar rahe ho?" the girl shouts. The sadhu lets out another wheeze. "Anjal," says the guy beside me. "Dog name, " providing me the final useful bit of information to complete the jigsaw.

"Is angrez ko chai dedo," the girl tells her mom (the woman seated on the same bench as mine. I figured the man and the woman seated beside me are her parents) . I didn't even realize she had started making tea. I stand up to receive the cup of tea from the woman.

Meanwhile, the sadhu makes a mocking noise in the tune of a lengthy "Om" to a foreign lady walking past us. And smiles. The girl shouts," Ek kheech ke maaregi na, to naam bhool jayega." And laughs.

My tea gets over. I try play on with the girl's earlier comment about the angrez.

"Kitna ho gaya?" I ask her, gauging her reaction at the same time.

"Paanch, " she replies without flinching a wink.

I pay her quietly, accepting defeat and walk away.