Hindi Comic

            In our second host family’s home I found a kid’s magazine next to my bed. It was all in Hindi, so I flipped through it looking for something I could understand. I wasn’t having much luck, but then on the back of the little magazine I found a comic strip. That might be cheating a little because there were pictures to help me, but I read carefully through each panel trying to understand as much as I could. I think I even did it without looking up any words. I didn’t know every single word that I saw, but I was able to figure out most of the statements based on the words I did know and whatever context I could figure out from those words or the pictures that went with them.

            From what I could tell, there was a businessman working in an office. Another man came into the office, but in an attempt to get rid of the intruder, the businessman pretended to be busy talking to someone on his telephone. He talked and talked, but the other guy wouldn’t leave the office, so finally he asked what they guy wanted and he answered that he was there to fix the businessman’s telephone.

            Pretty funny huh? It may have been more funny for myself if it hadn’t taken me so long just to figure it out. But I was relieved and proud of myself at the end.

            Just to make sure I had interpreted it correctly I asked our host-sister, Tenwang to re-interpret it for me to see if I was right.  I think her interpretation was slightly different from mine, but I had gotten the jist of it, and at least got the punchline correct.

            I tried to do some more of these later on. At a train station on the way to Amritsar I bought another little kids magazine with some stories and jokes in it. These ones proved to be harder than that first one I’d read, but were still fun to try and figure out.

            It’s a little embarrassing, but also humbling, to learn how to read and speak all over again. It’s amazing that babies and little kids can do it. It takes  a lot of dedication and effort. Most of my life I was content with just knowing English, but the more I learn about other places and people and their languages, the more I want to learn those languages so I can better communicate with people. But learning a language is hard work. I know I’ve already said that a million times in these blog posts, but it just is!