Month: September 2003

Little pleasures

These days I am getting a lot of pleasure seeing my ex-colleagues work hard. This, for example is an excerpt of a conversation with one of them. sk : what are you doing nowadays ab : enjoying life mostly ab : went to bangalore, pune ab : living it up sk : hmmm sk : me working ab : haha ab : big HAHA! ab : don’t worry. tumhara din bhi ayega! Now, I always wanted to say that. And finally I got a chance!

A pirate called Sparrow

I watched Pirates of the Caribbean today. And Johnny Depp makes for an awesome pirate. His mannerisms, his accent, along with his hair – all combines to make him eminently watchable. Do catch it, if you haven’t already. I admire Depp for the variety of his roles. I’ve watched a few of his films – Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, Donnie Brasco, The Brave – and what I like is the fact that he does very diverse roles and brings a lot of character into whatever he plays.

The art of being multilingual

My friend Jil knows 7 languages – Assamese, Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, English, German and French. And I mean fluently. Not just one or two sentences. She’s from a Assamese-Bengali family. Lives in Karnataka. Learnt German. And is now learning French. Leaving me quite impressed. Indians I think tend to be multilingual, by and large. In school, we had to learn three languages. English, as intruction. Assamese, as the mother tongue. And Hindi, as the third language. Then, if you live in another state, you tend to pick up that language (at least basic spoken). If you are on relatively good terms with your neighbouring state, then you pick some language skills across the border. If you decide to learn a foreign language, you have one more ace up your sleeve. My own language skills are limited to Assamese, English and Hindi. I can understand a bit of Marathi (but then they hardly speak the language in Mumbai). And I can understand Bengali, but I can’t speak it very well. Next on my ‘to-do’ list is …