Saturday, April 28, 2012

Yahaan, here

Main yahan hoon/ I’m right here”, she told me when I called to check if she was keeping her appointment or not. Half an hour later, I was still waiting for her at the coffee-shop. When she finally turned up, forget apologising for being late, she actually made me feel guilty about arriving on time. 
She had a point. I should have known better than to presume that ‘yahan’ meant ‘here’, when it actually meant ‘somewhere within a radius of roughly an hour of travel time, not accounting for traffic jams, and other distractions’. Distance are not absolute, are they? 
______
There are words, and there are words. Some words can be easily translated, others need to be described.  In April, I’ll attempt to capture the Soul of 26 'Indian' words in a  drabble of exactly 100 words.

3 comments:

Summer Ross said...

Great drabble! I enjoyed how the meaning can be somewhat subjective.

Anonymous said...

Natasha - Such an interesting look at culturally different concepts of time. "Now" simply doesn't always mean "now." Neither does "right here." It all depends on one's concept of what those things mean.

Meera said...

The IST at worst. "The problem with being punctual is that there is nobody to appreciate it."

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