Beyond Language Barriers!

Here is a favorite picture that I want to share. It is one of my son conversing with his great-grandmother in Delhi, India. This was an amazing bond and sight to behold as each technically had no clue as to what the other was talking about. An almost four-year old chattering nineteen to dozen innocently in American-accented English to an almost hundred year old rather crusty lady who did not know a word of English and was almost blind and bed-ridden. "Mataji" as she was called ("Mata" means mother in Hindi and "ji" is a suffix that is added to show respect)was my ex's grandmother and lived at the bottom-level of his parents' home. Alone in a semi-independent unit at the mercy of the family servants to take care of her, Mataji was lonely and almost morbidly self-absorbed in her numerous medical ailments. She was not someone you messed with yet this is a story of how she became a cream-puff in the company of her great grandson who oblivious to his very austere and rather sad surroundings enthralled her with his baby fantasies...

Life got away with everyone and as is apt to happen, folks living in that house were caught up in their own affairs, so this lady would spend her time in prayers, her day brightened by brief visits from family and friends. (Note the pictures of the Hindu deities on the wall and the sill- it is typical of most Hindu homes to have their gods in their most-used living space.)

As is the story of most Indian immigrants, we tend to go back to the ancestral home regularly, taking our kids with us so that they get a chance to meet the family back home and also remain in touch with their roots. So in those years, we use to fly to India almost on an annual basis. Here on our first visit, my son would daily run down stairs, literally squat Indian-style on his great-grandmother's bed and prattle away with her about his little world in English. Being a first-generation American, he did not know a word of Hindi- India's main language or Punjabi our native dialect. Am not proud of the fact, but we had gotten used to conversing totally in English here in US - actually always did even back home in Delhi because English is the spoken language of the educated in the cosmpololitan cities. Obviously my son did not know Hindi at all. Today thanks to watching Hindi Bollywood movies with English sub-titles, he just knows enough to realize when he is being yelled at- funny how much more effective a scolding seems in your own native tongue.

Anyway lack of Hindi language skills not deter my son. He would narrate with emphatic gestures his Ninja Turtle escapades and she would listen to his childish voice prattling away - every now and then asking indulgently in Punjabi, anybody nearby as to what the heck was the child babbling. Didn't matter. That was a token question. Both the child and the great-grandmother understood each other in the language that counts - the language of familial bonds and love. Both were just content to be in each other's company...

Anyway let us head over to Candid Carrie's world and seeing what else is going on...