Approximately…

Paris, Champs Elysée, Christmas

Ever tried living in a country far far away from home where none of the languages you know are spoken, at least not by many?

I came to live in France seven years ago. It took me a year to start speaking French with relative ease. Now I know, that learning a new language is like opening a gigantic vault crammed with mysteries you suddenly know you can unravel. It drives you nuts.

Living away from India has also given me thousands of opportunities to get to know myself better. It’s like being surrounded by mirrors. You see more of yourself from every angle at all times. It can be amusing and challenging or both.

But it’s an enriching experience. Things that you did or said casually, unselfconsciously, are under constant scrutiny all of a sudden.

“Party animal” takes on a whole new meaning. You are a bit like the creature under the magnifying glass. On the way to a party, you’ll find yourself doing google searches on “Delhi population” and “number of dams in India” because you are the designated expert now. It has it’s advantages.

People are always curious, so you get a lot of attention and you are quite often unique, a privilege my compatriots living in, let’s say, London don’t enjoy. In all of this, you end up getting to know yourself better. You are a kind of ambassador for your country. There is a certain introspection you have to do, to be able to represent and define yourself and your people.

Some questions used to startle me earlier, now I relish them. “Ah! You don’t speak in your own language with your family?” exclaim grandmotherly types,  who’ve never spoken anything but French. They’ve caught me chattering away on the phone switching from English to Hindi and back.

How many can I re-read in their original French versions?

It gets more complicated when we are two Indians together in one place. Even if we are from almost identical backgrounds, we reply in a discordant chorus to questions like  “Is the caste system still prevalent in India?” or “How do Indians make tea?” Which brings me to recipes.

French recipes, just like “western” recipes in general, are pretty accurate to the last gram or millilitre. My mother taught me how to cook in the thoda sa ye-thoda wo style, so it’s much harder for me to pass on a great recipe to people. They need to watch me cook, spend more time with me. There are no easy or accurate answers to how we Indians do things.

In fact, we don’t look for accuracy in everything. We tend to play things by ear. A wedding ceremony will be debated by relatives, while it’s being conducted. A huge number of Indians have no Holy text and define their religion whichever way they want. If we make a plan, we don’t always have to stick to it. We even find traffic lanes and red lights a bit stifling.

All this makes us more indulgent, more forgiving and a certain lack of rigidity sometimes makes us more innovative. It also means we are much less predictable but each of us can offer a certain exclusivity. Salil Tripathi, an Indian writer who lives across “La Manche” or the “English Channel” says it’s pretty much the same with music. “If you follow a western score, each symphony will be precise. Try two renderings of same raga by same singer at different times, and they’ll be very different.” Fascinating isn’t it?

I have made peace with the reality that I come from a country of approximations. I get a round of applause when I crack a walnut open by sticking it in the hinge of a door, I can’t give up just because there’s no nutcracker around?

When we make a dash to pay for everyone at the table in the restaurant in India, visiting French friends look unsettled. There are no rules about who pays. The richest, the oldest, the ladies, the gents, everyone says it should ideally be them. At home, I did start measuring the haldi and dhania before tossing it into the kadhai for the benefit of my French friends. I now have quite a few Indian recipes written down. Measured, accurately.

Saying “no” instead of “maybe” is something I learnt only recently. If a friend asks me to go and watch a film with them, and if I’m too busy or don’t feel like it- I am kind to both of us and say no. I don’t even give long loving explanations. In India we are petrified of saying no to invitations. So it’s all very unclear right to the end. It’s excruciating for hosts, but they’ll do it too, when it’s their turn.

And we all know about good old Indian standard time. When I turn up fashionably late for dinner because 8pm can easily mean 8:45pm for me, I start a conversation about Shahrukh Khan and how he turns up at least four hours late for any appointment because he is God to many. But how painful that is for journalists like me, I add. I come up with a story a two about my fabulous encounters with SRK and everyone easily forgets I inconvenienced them. I have compensated well for it. That, approximately, is my Indian way of saying “Sorry, I am late.”

Have a laddoo?

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