There are some days where things happen that remind me I'm actually in India. This isn't really the country I live in. Sometimes, as in almost always, I find myself in a state of mind where I'm convinced this is my reality from here on out. What my life actually is, in America, feels like an incredibly distant dream. Time is so strange here. Anyways...there's just some things that will happen and it finally clicks, "oh yeah...I'm not really one of these people." Haha. Things like this are the never ending language struggle, the incredible music (not really...sorta sounds like everyone is whining, but I'm dealing), men lighting up joints as they walk down the street and it being totally okay, oh, and the smell of urine on every street (you know, if you're a man and you need to go...you need to go, if you're a woman...can't help you there). Need a little bit of silly to balance out the serious...
Gotta love language confusion.
So, when I first arrived and was doing my best to cram in as much Bangla as possible, apparently I told our host family's daughter that she "eats crazy", not paper as I meant to say, since she was pretending to snack on a sheet of paper. Just a funny moment. Pagol = crazy. Kagoj = paper. Easily confused...not really.
To a 5 year-old whose first language is Hindi...belly button doesn't translate. Haha. And,this 5 year-old, who is still learning English, may doubt you when he asks you for language translation. He asked four people what his "pit" is in English...it's his back. But we need three Americans and his English speaking mother to confirm it. I'm not going to say how ridiculous I feel when I ask this 5 year-old to translate between Bangla, Hindi, and English for me. Not going there.
My favorite as of yet...Today, I was talking to one of the few guys that works at the office. He is a master sewer. Legit. Anyways, I was working in that room, but also shuffling my way through the mass of Bangla going on. I tried to ask the guy if "cow" in Bangla is "guru". I didn't get the expected yes or no answer, instead I got "Hei (yes), tumi guru khaw?" Apparently my English "cow" sounded like "khaw" in Bangla, which is "you eat"...this guy thought I asked him if he eat's cow. I got my answer: guru is cow. And I got another answer: this man does in fact eat cow. But it doesn't stop there. The best part, never minding the fact I just asked someone in India if they eat cows where Hindu is one of the most popular religions of ever...and thankfully he is actually Muslim...all hearts clear, is that Monday was Eid, the Muslim holiday of sacrifice. That's right people...sacrifices in the streets. (Side note: we couldn't leave the house because apparently in the part of town we would be visiting has a huge Muslim population...therefore bloody streets and bloody people...or something of that matter.) Anyways...since I happened to ask this man if he eats cow two days after the day of sacrifice, the day Muslims consume a huge amount of beef, we then played show-and-tell. That's right...dude had pictures on his phone. He was so proud to show us the cow he sacrificed. I stopped looking after the picture of the cow with the bloody neck. He then when on to explain that is why his back, arms, and legs have been hurting. He helped wrestle it to the ground. And those band-aids on his hands...definitely battle wounds. Oh boy. Moments like that remind me I'm not in America anymore.
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