9 Jun 2013
Last
week, as you will recall death and funerals set the tone for my blog entry.
Last night the wheel turned and I celebrated a birth. Faithful readers of this blog will recall
Christina Massey, the woman who cooks and cleans for us. Her brother and sister
in law had a baby yesterday and in the afternoon, while at District Conference,
I got a text from Christina. The hospital where her sister in law gave birth
was in the neighborhood of the Church where the conference was being held. She
asked if I wanted to come see the baby between the two sessions. As it turns out
President Massey (Her cousin? Her uncle? I am not quite sure of the
relationship) came up to me at the end of the afternoon session and said, ”Do
you want to go see the new baby?” He threw his arm around me and we went along
with Christina’s fiancé to see Samara (picture below).
Knowing
there are a wide variety of hospitals in India, I wasn’t sure exactly what to
expect. What I found was something very familiar. When we opened the door to
their room we saw a happy, loving family gathered around a bed with a tired but
happy looking women in it, with a new born swaddled in a blanked with knit cap
on her head lying in a rocking cradle next to her. The bed appeared to be
fairly modern, not too different from what one finds in the States. The cradle
looked a bit more vintage. It was made of metal and painted white, with some
areas showing bare metal where the paint had worn off. Even with air
conditioning on, the room was fairly warm between the people gathered around
and the door to the un-air conditioned hallway opening frequently. Samara (the
baby’s name) probably would have been comfortable with just a light blanket but
no, they had her swaddled in a heavy blanket with that knit cap on her head. It
made me sweat just looking at her.
Her
face was kind of red but there was not the darker read splotch that appears in
the picture. That had to be a shadow or something. She actually is a cute baby.
Not as cute as the babies in our family of course, but cute.
This
week I also found out a little more about Mehndi, our driver. He and I have
become more comfortable with each other (late hours driving all over New Delhi
on the Lord’s business I guess). This week I found out he had been a driver for
five years for a Member of Parliament. He quit last winter to get married. He
showed me a picture of his wife; she is quite attractive but given what his
mother in law looks like, that may not last. No offense intended or implied.
After
work, Church service, and talking to Rae (I LOVE Vonage!) the thing that
occupies my time is trying to learn Hindi. I have Rosetta Stone, which may
eventually pay dividends but doesn’t seem to be moving me to my goal very
directly. Also, not unlike last week’s Bollywood movie trip, I will sometimes watch
TV in Hindi. I also am trying to pick up words and phrases both in conversation
and by asking people “How do you say [fill in the blank] in Hindi?” I’ve
learned a few things here and there from other people but Christina and Mehndi
have been the most consistent and helpful.
Although I enjoy learning Hindi, I wish the Babble Fish from the Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy actually existed. I would love to instantly be able to
communicate with anyone in his or her native language. I have always liked the
quote by Charlemagne, “To have another language is to possess a second soul.” Doctrinally,
I don’t think that is quite correct but I do think you can only partially know
a country until you can speak their language. This makes India an amazing
challenge. Hindi and English are the official national languages. However there
are over 30 languages in India with a million or more speakers and well over a
hundred languages all together. Some are closer to dialects but there are many
that are less similar than German and French, for instance or German and Japanese for that matter.
Hindi
is actually an Indo-European language (well Indo-Aryan to be specific but that is a
branch of Indo-European so why quibble?). There are a few very old words that have
cognates that are recognizable (do for two, for instance or adami for man). However, there are some sounds that are nearly impossible for a (cough, cough) shall we
say “mature” English speaker to make correctly. I thought the guttural stop in
German and the rolled r in Spanish were hard but some sounds in Hindi defy my
ability. I think it will be some while before someone mistakes me for Indian.
Like
Japanese, the fact that Hindi is not written in roman characters makes learning
more challenging. You can't quickly expand your vocabulary by reading. The Devanagari script is quite beautiful (see below). Unlike
Japanese and Chinese it is an actual alphabet, although the way it is written,
with all letters connected across the top, it initially seemed totally undecipherable
to me. I have now been exposed enough to it that I can recognize the individual
characters. I am slowly learning the characters. Slowly being the operative
word. Hmm. Maybe it’s a good thing we’ll be here for three years.
हालाँकि सूर के जीवन के बारे में कई जनश्रुतियाँ प्रचलित हैं,
पर इन में कितनी सच्चाई है यह कहना कठिन है। कहा जाता है उनका जन्म सन् १४७८ में दिल्ली के
पास एक ग़रीब ब्राह्मीण परिवार में हुआ।
जनश्रुति के अनुसार सूरदास जन्म से ही अंधे थे। आजकल थीअंधे आदमी अक्सर 'सूरदास' कहलाते हैं। कई लोगों
ने उन्हें गुरु के रूप में
अपनाया और उनकी पूजा करना
शुरु कर दिया ।
Namaste.
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