Mushrooms and Ashrams
Language is a complex thing. It’s hard enough to communicate something with someone who shares your native tongue, but when neither party shares a common language, I find myself speaking slowly, calmly and clearly, while flailing my arms all over the place.
The Most Important Topic of Tea
My first and by far longest displeasure with foreign tea began in the city of San Francisco in 2009 and continued for four years. During this time, on returning from the states I would always report back that they do something with their tea that makes it taste quite foul.
In 2013 someone quizzed me on my use of half and half after deploying the tea bag to the bin in a Starbucks, to which I replied “It’s the equivalent of semi-skimmed milk right?” No, it most certainly isn’t. In the UK, semi-skimmed is a milk with about 2.5% fat whereas in the US, half and half is a light cream with about 12.5% fat.
All those years complaining about what they did to their tea and it was me all along. I’m sorry America.
With the exception of the UK and Ireland, Europe doesn’t seem to give too much thought to the idea of tea. In France, they seem to love giving you tea with hot milk, causing a little froth at the top of your brew like frogs have laid their spawn in the mildly hot liquid; Heaven forbid using boiling water!
During a trip to Lyon, I had endured a week of pretty dire tea. It was decided to use Foursquare to head to the best café in town. You should now understand two things: Firstly, my ability with the French language is much more dire than they are with tea. Secondly, I was desperate for a decent cup.
I described along with hand gestures that I wanted just cold milk, not hot milk. Just cold milk. No cream. Just cold milk. The very patient French lady questioned me a couple of times, but eventually I think we’ve come to an understanding as she repeats “Just cold milk?”. Oui oui oui!
It was our last morning and we had ordered a selection of pastries, the perfect French breakfast awaited! After a few minutes the lady appeared with the drinks, she left, I looked down. It seemed I had managed to order a cup of cold milk with a tea bag bobbing up and down, trying to work out how on earth it could infuse this thick, cold liquid.
Just cold milk.
As the French story may show, I’m pretty terrible when it comes to foriegn languages, but one phrase I always learn is “thank you”. On the first day I arrived, I learned one informal Hindi word for thank you: shukriyaa. I say this to the maids of the house I’m staying at and it seems to always get a smile or a laugh. Nowhere I have travelled has it ever been frowned upon to attempt to say thanks in their language.
Indians have quite a sweet tooth it seems and chai is served with milk and sugar by default, so I also learned the phrase phikichai, which is tea without sugar.
The first time I used this phrase with Indra, the elder maid who speaks almost no English. Apparently she had said to Asrita, the other maid, “he said phikichai, but I think he’s confused and means tea without milk…”
When it came back, I was a little confused and what followed was pointing at the tea, trying to gesticulate milk and laughing about the whole situation.
Two Mushrooms
On Sunday I decided to checkout the local ashram at about 6pm, which seems late to casually leave the house because the sun sets just over an hour later in Delhi due to the fact that this massive country is covered by a single time zone.
Indra was the only person to be found, so I used my best hand signals along with English words in the hope that I could get the message across.
“I’m going for a walk…”, I said putting my middle and fore-fingers to work in a walking motion.
“…to see the ashram…”, putting the two fingers to my eyes before lifting them to the direction I understood the ashram to be.
“…I won’t be long, I’ll be back for dinner.”, showing my watch and gesturing a knife and fork.
This process took a few minutes and parts were repeated as her confusion seemed to fade and I was confident that the little game had been a success.
She then went and found Kalpana, the friend I’m staying with, and I waited. After a minute she came back and asked that I speak with Kalpana. I was told that Indra had came in saying, “He asked for two mushrooms, two! What should do?”
We had to laugh and I explained what I actually meant, which was then explained to Indra and we all had quite the chuckle!