Faking an accent in the elevator

You know those people who go abroad for a month on some training program to New York, are made to stay in an apartment in Jersey City that's being shared by 3 other Indians, find an Indian store to buy groceries from, go partying with their Indian friends except for the one night when their local co-workers took them out (pictures of which are instantly put up on facebook), stay back an extra week to vacation with their aunt in NJ who takes them to Niagara Falls (the American side) and an outlet mall from where they buy a GAP sweatshirt which will be their uniform for the next 12 months, and then come back to India with an American accent?

I used to scoff at such people. "Bah!" I would say, secure and proud in my natural tongue, "I scoff at such people!"

Today, I'm not scoffing.

In fact, I'm the opposite of scoffing. That is, if the opposite of scoffing is cringing. With embarrassment. And a feeling of "Et Me Brutus?" (Or is it "Me Tu Brutus"? Damn you Google's language tools. You're about as useful as a bail-out plan that gets rejected.)

Anyway! Let's just tackle one language at a time. And that language is English. One that I thought i was fluent in, had spoken and written in long enough for it to be part of my identity. My strong, proud Indian identity which I love to flaunt whenever i can. And that identity comes with an accent. A nice urban Indian English accent with it's own rules for pronouncing a fairly decent sized vocabulary. And most importantly, an accent that I believed could be understood by all.

Not true.

It all began at Starbucks. As I rattled off a rather lengthy order to a cashier one day I found that instead of hurrying the process along, my regular speed of talking had doubled the time it took for him to figure just what the hell it was I wanted.
Evidently I'llgetacafemochatallandastrawberrycoffeecakeplease is as good as me placing my order in Hindi. Lesson 1: Speak sloooooowly.

The problem with speaking slowly then was that it made me lose my entire rhythm. You know, how everyone speaks in a certain rhythm? In any given sentence, you tend to go high on some words, low on others, elongate some, skip lightly over others and pause when you want to create an effect?

Like right now?

Well, with my normal speaking speed being cut by 60%, I'd totally lost my rhythm. I was coming across as ET trying to order a mocha and a strawberry coffee cake. I. Simply. Could. Not. Go. On. Speaking. Like. This.

Losing your rhythm when you're nearly 30 is not an easy blow to deal with it. Fortunately, this impediment only arose when I spoke to Americans. Unfortunately when you live in America you tend to speak to a lot of Americans and therefore the problem would rear its ugly head quite often.

Like a lumberjack without his saw, a musician without her instrument, a sitcom without canned laughter, I felt helpless and handicapped. I simply had no way left of communicating. And thus the unthinkable happened. Without even realising it (at first), I started to speak with an American accent.

It began small. Words like "like" and "mmm-hmmm" entered my vernacular. I found myself using "yeaaah" quite unnecessarily. Then the lilt of the words started to change. Soon a whole new rhythm was born, an ugly bastard of a child that was neither Indian nor American.
It horrifies me and grates on my ears. But for some reason, my brain has no control over my mouth! While I'm perfectly normal when I speak to my own countrymen, place me in front of the other 5/6th of the world and just hear me go!

There's more.

Lately, it's not just the way I speak, even the words are coming out all wrong. My car runs on "gas", I get my food "to-go", I travel in an "elevator" and horrors! I actually asked another Asian how much a "gallon" of milk in her country was.

Everyone's heard of ABCDs - American Born Confused Desis. I wonder - just what do you call an Indian-born super-confused recent-entrant-to-America desi?

The First Cut

Getting rejected is never fun. Getting rejected in a foreign land even less so.

Maybe I was just feeling overly confident after getting my visa at the first attempt and being let into the US without a strip search - where I come from, such feats make it to the papers, right below "athlete almost makes it to first round of obscure unknown Olympic sport". Maybe it was that hogwash 'secret' book I'd just read which claims that if you really want something the universe hears you and makes sure you get it. Because that fateful day when I walked into HSBC to open an account, I expected to walk out with a credit card. With a giant spending limit. First of all, what the hell is a person supposed to do here with a credit card and second, any activities I had in mind (read shopping, eating and shopping) absolutely could not be carried out without one. So imagine my dismay when the nice man behind the desk politely told me that I'd been rejected. Reason: no credit history. Err...I just got here 3 days ago, how am I supposed to build up a credit history if you don't give me a credit card?

So after rejecting me and rendering 80% of my list-of-things-to-do-in-America undoable, I was cheerily told to "have a good one!" and escorted right out of the bank. Ironically, the door to the bank was right next to the bus stop and the universe could not have done a better job of putting me in my place.

That was the first one. What followed after was like a rejection sitcom. Every week I would find myself in a not-so-funny situation where someone would turn me down (and secretly giggle about it, I'm sure!)

Gap Shopping Card? Rejected. Reason - no credit history.

State Driving License Test? Not allowed to take. Reason - not enough credit cards or shopping cards, thus not enough points required to take it.

ZipCar Membership? Not eligible. Reason - absence of state driving license.

You see?? You see how crap feeds on itself and gives you more crap to deal with? And do you see how no American movie ever prepares you for rejections of this nature? I mean, the worst thing that ever happened to Carrie was when her shoes got stolen at a party. And at the end of the episode, she even got that lady to buy her a new pair. Sigh. This was not what I signed up for.

Once upon a time

I had a dream.

It had a swanky apartment with giant windows and warm mood lighting. It had exclusive little stores where everything was one of a kind and the owner knew my name. In my dream the food was always organic and the wine always unpronounceable. Egyptian rugs kissed my feet and cashmere throws kept me warm. Weekend getaways alternated between cosy mountain cottages and soothing riverside spas. 

It was a vivid dream and a happy one. A dream worth pursuing, worth dumping your home and your friends and family for, worth even shelling out large sums of money in the name of a higher education for. It was a dream that was guaranteed to become a reality in a year. My husband would be making money and I would be spending it. Yin and Yang, co-existing in perfect harmony. 

Well, things haven't quite turned out as I expected them to. Yes, I'm in America. Yes, my dear husband is well on his way to getting that dream MBA ticket that'll ensure us happiness for now and ever more. But there's a twist. See, we were fortunate enough to have landed here just as this country was going through a bit of a "slow-down". (Read the papers, they're full of details of what this means for everyone else.) What it means for me is that my dream has been a tad altered. It's everything I thought it would be, just in black and white.