Monday 27 July 2009

Please remove your testicle from my auto rickshaw

I am learning Hindi. To read, speak and write. The reading is easy once you learn the Devanagari script as it is a phonetic language. Writing is a bit more problematic. So k as a European would know it has four different letters. There are certain differences but I find them difficult to differentiate . I am told I do better than most foreigners. I think an English Northern accent helps with Hindi, something to do with how Northerners pronounce their a's and u's. However my conversational abilities are still poor. If someone speaks to me very, very, very slowly I sometimes understand. The good news is my speech and vocabulary are improving and I will get there one day.

However on a visit to Old Delhi I most certainly did not have the vocabulary I needed.

Old Delhi is great, we went to eat at Karim's,followed by the mosque, Jama Masjid, the flower market and the spice market. Whilst in the spice market the heavens opened. We sort shelter under an awning, Indian hospitality kicked in and we were offered stools to sit on and more secure cover in the nearest stall, selling sack after sack of several varieties of dried chillies. With the restrictions of the stall holder's English and my Hindi the various varieties were explained. It's a wholesale market so no one was looking for a sale, just a lovely friendly banter.

We left Chandi Chowk in Old Delhi to go to The Imperial for a nice cup of tea. It's my tour trip for most visitors as the contrast is great. From Old Delhi to the poshest hotel in town! We can only afford the tea.

Anyway we are coming from the the tourist area of the Red Fort in an autorickshaw. Begging in the area is rife with each beggar showing their deformities to drivers and passengers at the traffic lights.
Less shocking than in Slumdog Millionaire as it's adults with deformities rather than children.

On the journey at the first set of trafffic lights there was the man with the suppurating sore, children asking for money, swearing and hitting us when we didn't provide but they were later easily outdone by a man who was proudly displaying the most swollen, distended testicle in the world as his deformity and the reason for why we should give him money. It was larger than a rugby ball and it was there in the autorickshaw.

Unfortunately I didn't know the Hindi for "Please could you remove your testicle from my auto as a testicle is not what I want in my face today"

If I gave him money he would not spend it on a hospital appointment as that's his income, the deformity.

So I will just learn the Hindi for "get your testicle out of my autorickshaw please"

and continue to work in the slums to assauge my guilt as a "rich" person in Delhi

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