TRAVEL SERIES

When I Was Foreign in My Country

A city and a train journey that was my home for four years

I come from a country with twenty-two official languages. Not to mention, twenty thousand spoken languages or dialects. India is famous for dictions, culinary palate, and culture changing every hundred kilometers.

Lorena aka Sharing Randomly’s prompt about language challenges during travel didn’t need me to go international. Though, Thailand was an experience of its own as Nancy Blackman would attest.

I belong to New Delhi, the country’s capital. If domestic immigration was a thing, the pitch of a wall around the city could win local elections. People from all over the country will flock to its heart in search of a better job and lifestyle. Being a Delhiite is a prestige, a medal of honor everyone wants to wear.

While Hindi is its primary language, New Delhi is a fusion city. A one-stop destination to experience Incredible India. Not that it helped me become multi-lingual. Hindi was the only language I knew when I decided to go to college in the southern part of the country. Three thousand kilometers away from home.

After a fifty-two-hour train journey across the nation, I reached Kochi. The first language of the state is Malayalam—one of the toughest and curviest you can come across in a lifetime.

I didn’t even know a word of Malayalam and was banking on my knowledge of English to tread the unknown waters. I got out of the train station and walked straight to the auto-rickshaw stand.

“Brother, would you go to Cochin University?” I asked one of the drivers.

Have you made a life-altering decision only to regret it? What came out of his mouth wanted me to go back into the station, and catch a train back home. Another fifty-two hours in a cramped space seemed a sweeter deal than gambling another four years in that foreign land in my own country.

“Mansa Illa, Cheta. Po, Po,” he asked me to get lost as he didn’t understand me. It was his yelling diction and the thick mustache that ran down a chill down my spine.

But I was at a point of no return. It was either winning this battle or getting shot at point-blank by my father. He had already invested his life savings in the tuition fee.

“Cochin University, brother. Go, please?”

“Illa. Illa. Poda,” he refused again and wanted me to get lost.

If he didn’t understand me or denied going the University route, I wasn’t sure. I had to try my luck—in Hindi.

“Bhaiya (brother), Hindi maloom (do you know Hindi)?” I asked.

“Hindi nahi maloom (I don’t know Hindi),” he responded.

Jackpot. The amount of Hindi he just spoke was enough for me. I had never been teary-eyed talking to an auto-rickshaw driver. I wanted to hug him like a long-lost brother from another mother.

“Tum jitna bola, utna kafi (that will do for me). CUSAT chalega (will you go to CUSAT)?” I asked him in Hindi.

“CUSAT jaana (want to go to CUSAT)?” he asked back.

I smiled and shook my head in affirmation like a happy-cow sans the slurping tongue and moo. With hand gestures, he told me it would cost me five hundred rupees. All I wanted him to do was drop me at the college campus where someone could speak English.

That he did, after driving me for an hour through a city that would become home for the next four years.

If you haven’t read Sarah Paris on Medium, you are missing the meat of the platform. She thinks she has lost her funny which is already my favorite joke of 2022.

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