English manners

English people are very well polished and their manners and etiquettes are well known. A few of those unusual manners I observed while I was in London....

Stand in a line- they stand in line EVERYWHERE. Even when you are in a store during sale and you are holding a t-shirt or trying on a pair of shoes, they won’t rush you, they’ll patiently wait for their turn. And I read somewhere- In England, a queue is one place where you can start a conversation with a stranger without being introduced.

Keep the door open- be it a tiny gate outside your building, lift door, bar door, shop door, restroom door- essentially any kind of door that is not automatic- when you open a door and before you leave it, you look back and in case you see anyone within hundred miles who might walk through that door, you hold it open, or keep a restraining palm on the door showing how much you want to keep the door open. It is polite. Everyone does it there and no matter how useless the whole practice might be, very soon you will find yourself doing the same.

Pehle aap- this happens in the tube when two people move towards the lone empty seat. Both will use their hands and expressions to say, “Ma’am/ Sir please go ahead and take the seat. Kind Regards XYZ”. This will go on for a few seconds until someone takes the seat. If it’s a man and a woman, the woman will ultimately take the seat, if they are people of the same gender, the older one will take the seat. Put this in contrast to the way we rush to take seats and giving it up is something we cannot even consider. In the defense of desis, the Brits here are not travelling in a thakela, jam packed bus with the outside temperature of fifty degrees C only and no AC in the bus! If that were the case, British politeness may have been different.

Love, darling, doll, sweetheart- the older lot will often refer to you as ‘love’. For example you are standing in the middle of a narrow aisle and trying to figure out which way do you have to turn or in a store where you are lost in the bakery section- suddenly you hear a soft, “excuse me, love”. You turn around wondering who the hell that is and come face to face with a white haired lady in a skirt and cardigans. You smile and give her way.

The greetings- the way someone here will greet you will be more affectionate than how your mommy will greet you when you go back home after one year. The receptionist at the office door will sound more excited about talking to you at eight in the morning than you will ever be to talk to the love of your life!

Thanks, sorry, excuse me, do you mind- for a day, if they were to put a pound in a jar everytime they said one of these words and gave those jars to me, I’ll fall short of space for my lvs, chanels, guccis and pradas. In the bus- driver will thank the passengers and passengers will thank driver. On the cash counter- customer will thank the cashier, cashier will thank customer. On a tube- anyone will thank anyone even if anyone steps aside by inches. Excuse me, I’m sorry comes together a lot of times. A slight touch when someone moves past you, miles before you pass each other in a narrow lane, or five minutes before anyone can have any physical contact in a tube they’ll tell you sorry or excuse me. Imagine one of those at dadar station!!

Sometimes it gets on your nerves but still it’s nice to see all the politeness.

Giving and receiving

I am becoming increasingly convinced that shopping for and giving a gift to someone special- special enough to stand out in a crowd, then seeing the happiness on the person's face, is way more precious and fulfilling than buying something for yourself or receiving gifts.

Self-centered as I may be, I think I'm still a *giving* person, more than a *receiving* person. It truly gives me great joy to know that I've given someone some joy :)

Just a thought

A person of many colors need not be a chameleon, always,...he/she could be a rainbow...

BBPPLG

This time when I went home I did some talking with my 9 year old cousin- Chunnu, who’s in third standard. I was talking to him about his school, his friends, his teachers and he was telling me all kinds of stories very enthusiastically. He told me how they play football in break time, how their class teacher keeps changing the seating arrangement and how they avoid sitting next to girls (!!! :-|), how they sing prayer before lunch, how they have to clean the school ground if their shoes are not polished, how they have to share their lunch boxes on fridays, and how he wants to sit next to this one boy in his class whose mom cooks wonderful maggi and lots more.

He asked if I could help him in his homework and I gladly agreed to do so. He took out his hindi notebook. Damn, it’s been ages since I wrote anything in hindi!! He had to finish two ‘paath’ (lessons). While he was finishing up his hindi homework I took his book, *saras bharti* and read a few chapters. He was amazed at how fast I could read. He declared that I wasn’t reading anything, according to him, I was only turning pages. He was paying more attention to when I was turning a page than his homework. Man, I remember how I used to feel the exact same way when I was his age... =))

After hindi he took out mathematics. His homework was 15 sums on dividing a 4-digit number by a 2-digit number. Very proudly he told me he could also do the division for 5-digit numbers and then asked me how many digit numbers I can divide :)

I was flipping through his notebook when I found a piece of paper on which there were some acronyms. He picked it up real fast and when I asked what that was, came an answer “didi yeh kuch nahi hai, mere friend ki hai.” He was visibly embarrassed. His mom started laughing and told me that they do this timepass in their free period.

I had to do something about it. I had to know what was there in that paper. So when he went to sleep, I took out the paper *evil evil* Shalu and I laughed really hard at that and I had to, just had to steal it from him. Ok don’t judge me on that, next day I told him that I am going to keep that paper. He hesitated initially but then said you can’t take it just like that. So we struck a deal. He thought about it for 5 minutes and sheepishly said “aapko do kaam karne padenge. (It was dinner time.) Dal ke saare tamaatar khane padenge. Mere liye uncle chips ka packet laana padega abhi.” Innocence :)

Here’s what it was on that paper, he’s going to go red one day when I’ll show him this-

DON- Danger of Nepal (by danger he meant dangar. Dangar means animal)

JBT- Jama baavli tared

MMH- Mental medical house

BDPKLG- Budha daaru peeke ludak gaya

NCC- National chappal chor

BBPPLG- Budha bagpiper peeke ludak gaya ;))

M- Mota

P- Patla

MH- Mota haathi

If only

Most couples make me uncomfortable and sick with their couply ways, especially when they act all coochie-coo romantic and what not in public. But there are some couples that just give you a very good feeling each time you see them together.

I think Javed Akhtar and Shabana Azmi are one such couple. I caught them on an episode of 'Koffee with Karan' on youtube. Whether it was him teasing her about all her activist stuff, or her teasing him about his bad memory with appointments, it was a pleasure to watch them interact. It's amazing how both of them are extremely serious and witty at the same time.

Javed really stole the show when Karan asked him to say a few lines for Shabana and he said:

Khush shakl bhi hai woh, yeh alag baat hai......

Magar hume zaheen log hamesha aziz the....

vaah vaah! vaah vaah!

He translated it, 'cause Shabana was lost :)) she's good looking, but that is beside the point. The fact is that I have always loved intelligent people.

Man, I was totally bowled over. Now this is the kind of couplet a girl would like to hear. Sigh!

If only Anish wasn't so urdu-challenged :)