"Silence is not my mother tounge"

 Yeh its funny when the language you speak the most at your work place is not your mother tounge. Well 6 months into this kannada speaking land, I believe I can get the patients to understand what I speak (my belief) with some sign language, some Malayalam in between.

It took kannada pandits(kannada master) weeks of coaching to actually start speaking this forgein language. For 6 months I have been asking the patients to go and purchase dabba mulam(which in most parts of Karnataka means ointment in a can), but some parts of Karnataka dabba means useless. And actually a patient asked me if its useless why give it? After some translation found the better word was dabbi….

But these mistakes just don’t happen to a person who is just a few months old in Karnataka. It happens to people who have been here for years. The problem is mostly the grammar. Just the other day a patient asked one of the docs in kannada “can I take bath?” and the doc not a kannadiga replied in kannda and it came out as “come lets take bath”.

Well in India if you are in a state different from yours and don’t know their language you can survive with a little hindi. But unfortunately I am too bad in that language too. I was always proud that despite being a south indian I could follow hindi well until this day when my watchman came and told me that mera beta ghuzar gaya(my son paased away)… thinking that he had won something in a very jovial manner I told very nice just to see his eyes welling up and realised I had got it wrong. So I asked him again to know wat had happened. I will never forgive that look on his face and will never forgive myself.

Then of course if you are a good actor, your sign languages and expressions are going to help the patient understand wat u meant. And of course the kanndigas are good people. They know that this language is not my mother tounge and they try their best to make u understand their problems. Yes but the occasional giggles you do get…

No wonder its said that “humans dream in thier mother tounge”…