‘Whats ‘kantala’ ?’, he interrupted casually as his friends carried out a normal conversation. And that’s when it happened; the earth stopped spinning and in complete slow motion everyone turned to look at him as if he had inquired about something that every single person on the earth is supposed to know. ‘You’ve never heard that word before ? You’ve got to be kidding me !’, the interrupted guy reverted, before guffawing and telling everyone around the ‘amazing’ fact. He shook his head slowly, gazing at his friends’ faces hoping that someone would support him, the Delhi guy, not knowing Maharashtrian slang. All he heard were the routine remarks, the smirks and the pathetic tries at humor. ‘Delhi is on what planet, again?’, ‘So clearly you’ve never been on the streets then?’,'Sirf English aata hai kya tereko?’. Lost, he felt just as out of place as he always did at that tapri (a jugaadu smoking place and a tea house, if you must know), standing with the same group of people, not smoking as each of the rest took drags off multiple cigarettes of various brands.
This had become a regular. The tapri. The out-of-place feeling. The slang lessons. The remarks. The smirks. But even after all the mockery, all the interrupted conversations, the people would be nice enough to explain him the meaning of the words he didn’t understand. No matter how short lived the life of the meaning in his head was, the fact that they would pause their conversations almost thrice a day to answer his silly but valid doubts, would make him feel good abut himself for a bit longer. Those bastards weren’t bad. Strangely, he enjoyed being the non-regular guy out there. With everyone else alike, even a pinch of uniqueness would add the much needed tang to this insipid congregation. The twist however, lay in the fact that he had a whole lot of it.
He had promised himself that he would never let his accent, his slang, be affected by the place and people around. He still enjoyed hearing new words, new ways of putting some into a sentence and even newer ways of speaking some. Watching people from around him change, blend in, and forget what they actually were, he thought to himself, that he wouldn’t. He knew he would change too. He didn’t fear the change. “When you are new to your surroundings, everything is different, everything is a mystery. And to keep the mystery alive, you need to have a way of your own to approach, associate with, and apprehend it.” He had to adopt new flavors of life as a wide variety of them approached him from every possible direction and aspect of casual living, however, keeping in touch with the original ones.
Auto-rickshaw rides weren’t that odd now, the routes and destinations not that blurry, the addresses not that confusing, the language not that annoying, the food not that insipid, the traffic not that irritating, the people not that alike, the weather not that bizarre, life not that bewildering .
Fitting in, however hard it might be at first, is always utterly enjoyable, strangely interesting, amusingly thoughtful and simply amazing…..
…..to be continued
Pingback: Dilli to Boom-bai : Daaru, Sutta aur Vo ! | CAMPUSGHANTA