Language barrier

The letter from my head office was terse and to the point. The one-paragraph letter brought down my world. It stated that I had been transferred to Ahmedabad in Gujarat and was to join the regional office there exactly one month from the receipt of the transfer order.

Having spent most part of my life in Maharashtra, I was not keen to relocate to a different state. The biggest problem I foresaw was that of language. But my colleagues assured me that anyone who understood Marathi and Hindi would easily be able to pick up the Gujarati language. There was truth in this logic because after all Maharashtra and Gujarat were formed from the same Bombay presidency state.

Even before going to Ahmedabad, I was aware of the Gujarati's penchant for pronouncing "hall" as "hole", "Paul" as "pole" and "snacks" as "snakes" but was not acquainted with the Gujarati numerals. Imagine my chagrin then when upon landing in Ahmedabad an auto-rickshaw driver charged me "sattar" rupees for a two-kilometre ride to the office from the railway station. Now, "sattar" is 70 in Hindi and I refused to give him 70 rupees for a two-kilometre ride (those were the days when 70 rupees could buy you a lot of things!). The auto-rickshaw driver had to do a lot of explaining, and made me understand in the end that he was charging me only Rs 17 and not Rs 70. "Sattar" in Gujarati is 17 while 70 is "sittar".

That was my first encounter with the language!

As I settled down, I heard the Gujaratis using a lot of "bay" in their conversation. For a person coming from the Hindi-speaking states, "bay" is not a good word to hear. But "bay" in Gujarati is the numeral "two".

Then, again, I was rather confused to hear one of my colleagues in the office always advising another colleague to "Saambhlo". The other colleague was sitting on a comfortable chair and there was no danger of his toppling; yet he was being advised to be on his guard! Now, "Saambhlo", pronounced as "sumbhlo" in Hindi, means "take care". I just could not understand why my office colleague was always being advised to "take care". It is later that I learnt that "saambhlo" in Gujarati actually means "listen".

Well as months passed I took a great liking for Ahmedabad and its people, and also began to love the language. But as I was trying to pick up the nuances of the language, I received another letter from the head office, once again transferring me to a different place.