I was very excited. So many stories were doing the rounds in my head, like a politician's helicopter surveying a flooded town. Every time it came around, this helicopter was throwing in food packets. And my poor brain was going bonkers, trying to digest it all. You see, I was about to land where they make dreams and Hindi movies -- Switzerland. And thanks to Bollywood flicks, I had, like many Indians before me, always wanted to be there. Kajol, I told myself, was not travelling with me this time because she had found appropriate yellow flowerbeds to dance in back home. Maybe she would get tired of them and come down for the real thing. And then I would be in place, ready to do the song-and-dance sequence... I came out of the airport and put my feet in Swiss soil. It felt very cold. Then I realised it was snow, not soil, and it would be some months before I got to toe the real thing. Anyway, I landed myself in a taxi and tried telling him where I wanted to go. That was when I had an inkling of what it was going to be like. In Switzerland, you see, they don't speak English. I am informed that they use three languages over here. But since none of them is English or Hindi, they can speak 30 for all I care. I tried my hand at the newspapers. It was a case of so close yet so distant. I could read everything but couldn't understand anything. Newspapers here, I think, are created by a random-letter generator. The alphabet is English all right, but they are arranged in a fashion to ensure that no word came anywhere close to any in my limited vocabulary. As hours turned into days, and days into weeks, I realised the hopelessness of my situation. Over here, I am a learned illiterate, in a class of my own. Be it at the railway station or the grocery shop, I am not sure of getting what I want. In my apartment, I am not supposed to flush the toilet after 11pm as it disturbs the peace of the people around -- an instruction written on our notice board in native language but which I understood only after committing the crime several times. Every new appliance I buy, my engineering credentials are put to test. I need to run and repair it based on my imagination, and not the instruction manual. The real test came when I went to the barber. After paying him an amount that was more than the sum of what I had spent all through my life on haircuts, I placed my head at his mercy. I told him what I wanted, he told me what I meant, and he did what he thought I meant. By the time we were in sync, my hair was in the sink. I don't know how I will show my face to Kajol now. Of the four walls of my house, three have started giving me bad looks. They seem to suggest I should soon find someone else to talk to. They complain that they are bored to death listening to me. I still talk to them, though I am sure they too understand only French. Maybe once they are bored I can start talking to my refrigerator, microwave and the few other precious belongings I have. Sitting quietly here in one corner of the world, enjoying Swiss life, eating pain (means bread in French, I am told), I perform the religious ritual of calling home, telling everyone over there how happy I am, successfully making them all jealous. Today I feel very committed to the literacy programme in India because I now know very well what illiteracy means. Merci to life here, without French, without Kajol. Manish desperately needs friends who can speak Hindi or English. Mail him? Illustration: Uttam Ghosh Tell us what you think of this diary
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