I have never had to use the rape whistle my father gave me. This is just as well, because I strongly suspect it would have been as useful as the French-English phrasebook that was my mother’s gift. In which case, if I ever had cause to use it, I would have been fucked in a big way. As it were.
For those phrasebooks are useless. The point has been made many times, especially over the internet, where it has been argued with great passion and bad grammar. Nevertheless, for the benefit of those who may have missed out on those great debates (most readers), and of those who love a self righteous rant about the uselessness of said phrasebooks (me), I shall endeavour to say a few words about them.
Phrasebooks are neither sufficient, nor are they necessary. Let us say that you go to France, with one of these books at your service. To Paris, where there are literally dozens of places to see. You go up to one of the locals for directions.
You (slow and constipated): Pardonay mua, misyoo, may pooryay voo si voo play ditt mua le shema du Louvre!?!
Local: ...
Quite what the local says in response is irrelevant. He could give you clear, concise directions to the Louvre. He could tell you that he’s sorry, but he’s not from around there and he doesn’t quite know the way. He could tell you that his feet hurt and he has irritable bowel syndrome. It doesn’t matter. At the end of his reply, the two of you look at each other thinking one of you must be retarded, and both of you have a pretty good idea which one it is. For while the good book tells you how to ask the questions, when the answers arrive, you’re on your own.
But even if there were a phrasebook out there that lets you understand the answers – at least the simpler ones – it would be unnecessary. When you venture out to see the world, you go and see the world as packaged by the tourist industry. Anyone you meet during your stay in foreign lands is likely to be a tourist sector employee, and thus, at least functionally conversant in English. What this means is that you don’t need to speak that foreign twaddle. And even in places where people speak practically no English, they recognise key English words which allow you to navigate with relative ease. I have been in cabs whose drivers spoke no English whatsoever. However, I’ve never gone, “Airport!” and had the driver turn on me as if I called his mother a crazy slut. Airport, train station, prostitute, Holiday Inn, these are all common words everyone knows. Admittedly, the more respectable cabbies won’t take you to the Holiday Inn – they have to draw the line somewhere – but they know what you’re talking about.
So, to reiterate, phrasebooks are useless. Or so I used to think. I recently found that they do have a purpose, though it’s not what they are advertised for. They aren’t to help the earnest traveller converse with locals in their native tongue. They’re to help pretentious twats say, “Ooh, I speak a little French.”, or, “Ooh, I speak a little Italian.”
On the subject of pretentious twats, I have noticed a lot of these people in Canada. This is not to say that India is free of them, of course. However, there is a difference in the nature of the pretence in the two countries. In India, partly no doubt due to it being a poor country, the pretentiousness takes on a very materialistic form. It’s all about what you have and how much it cost you to get it. In Canada, on the other hand, it’s all about where you’ve been and what you’ve done. An Indian would take out an iPhone and go, “Look everyone, I have an iPhone…. Behold, it is shiny and it cost shitloads…. Do you have an iPhone!?! Wait, do you even have a phone!?! I do, I have an iPhone…. Look, iPhone…
…
…
iPhone!...”
The Canadian knows that this is meaningless trumpeting. Anyone could go to their local cell phone operator, sign a contract and, lo and behold, they have an iPhone too. BUT, “I was in Peru just last week, near Macchu Picchu in fact, taking photos of the place with the inbuilt camera, and I fell into conversing with the locals. The phone has a very useful Spanish-English phrasebook, really superb, I tell you, and I could really bond with the locals. You must go there. It’s beautiful and the culture’s great - and the people there are soooo nice. Went out of their way to come and talk to me. I was never alone for a day….. By the way, have you seen my notebook!?! I haven’t been able to find it since I came back. I know I had it ….. And did I lend you my camera!?!”
The interesting thing is, people change the nature of their snobbishness to fit the culture they’re in. I have friends from India who came here flaunting the “Look what I have” and changed over time to the “Been there, done that”. After a couple of years, one such friend decided that he just had to go see Europe. Not out of any love of European culture, or art or architecture, mind you. He didn’t give two shits about any of that. No, it was just so he could say he’d been there. So he went on one of those 10-day, multi-country European trip packages.
Day 1 saw them in Paris, France. City of romance. Loads of things to do, places to see, and, this being France, people to shag. The guide was waxing lyrical about the city and its joys. As they passed each landmark, he told them about the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower and the Triumphal Arch, about how they came to be and the people who made them. He told them about the Paris of bygone days, when magic ruled the earth. He regaled them with folk tales and fairy tales, tales of ancient villains and ancient heroes who roamed the streets of the city and the fields that had once stood in their place ere Paris was born. He showed them the Champs Elysees, where…
“Pardonnay mua…”
The guide turned around, irritated at the interruption. His eyes beheld a swarthy, pot-bellied Indian, laboriously reading aloud from a two-penny phrasebook, “Pardonnay mua, may kee es lay bateemon lay ploo saylaybray eesee !?!”
Guide: Pardon!?!
Friend: Pardonnay mua, may kee es lay…
Guide: I can speak English.
Friend: Oh… umm… OK… which is the most famous building here!?!
Guide: I…. Really….
Friend: Well!?!
Guide (indecisively): Umm… the tower, I guess!?!
Friend: Thank you.
He then took a camera from his right trouser pocket and took a photograph of the tower. From his left trouser pocket, he took a small notepad on the front page of which were jotted the names of all the countries which the trip was to show him. Next to France, he put a big check mark. Then,
“OK, that’s France. When’s lunch!?! And please, none of your frog legs. Show me the nearest Indian restaurant.”
Day 2 brought them to Brussels. Part French, part Dutch, the city showed them the best of both cultures. The guide showed them the stunningly beautiful Grand Place, the cheeky Manneken Pis, and the awe-inspiring Cathédrale Saints-Michel-et-Gudule. He told them of the history of the city and its people. He told us of how the European Union…
“Pardonnay mua…”
The guide turned around slowly. He’d been dreading this.
Guide: Yes!?!
Friend: Pardonnay mua, may kee es lay…
Guide: I speak English!
Friend: Don’t shout. So… which is the most…
Guide: The cathedral. Look at it for Pete’s sake!
Friend: I thought the pissing kid was funny.
Guide: Fine! Take a photo of that! Keep that as your Belgian memento!
Friend: Thank you.
Camera. Notepad. Checkmark.
“When’s lunch!?!”
The same protocol was strictly observed in Stuttgart.
The Day 4 city was Zurich. Here, my friend hit a snag. He did not have a visa for Switzerland. He wasn’t alone in this; half the tour members lacked the visa. The tour management had accounted for this. Those with a visa could go to Zurich and sample the considerable (and Swiss) delights of that city. Those without were to be put up at a charming rural German resort where they could do all kinds of German things (presumably making cars and eating sauerkraut) till the others returned and the tour continued.
My friend did not like this at all. He had seen Germany. He had the photo and the checkmark to prove it. On the morning of the 4th day, when the privileged party had left for Zurich, he watched them go with longing. In his distress, he started pacing up and down in the open field outside the resort while his other denied tour-mates were wearing lederhosen and eating bratwurst. From where he was, he could see Switzerland. The border was only 500 metres from where he was, beckoning him, taunting him. He could so easily cross over and say forevermore that he had been to that blasted country, but bureaucracy denied him. There was a checkpoint only a few hundred metres from where he was. Musing on this all the while, he started to walk, somewhat absent-mindedly, towards the border. The guard at the check post saw him do so and started to walk over to intercept him (presumably to merely see his papers and let him in). My friend saw him approach and promptly lost it completely. Instead of turning back, or even pausing, he panicked and broke into a run for the border. The guard, now alarmed, started running too, to try and cut him off at the border. Tourists and locals were treated to a re-interpretation of “The Sound of Music” with my friend desperately trying to enter Switzerland before being caught by the obviously fitter German guard. Finally, panting like the out of shape engineering student that he was, he jumped over the border just ahead of the guard. And stopped. The guard, clearly not anticipating this admittedly unconventional manoeuvre on the part of a fugitive, nearly ran into him and only avoided collision by twisting his whole body out of the way and falling flat on the ground. From that undignified position, he looked at my friend with puzzlement and irritation. Both emotions intensified when my friend, instead of helping him up, took a camera out of his pocket, snapped his picture and checked off something in a small notepad. And then turned on his heel and walked back across the border with an air of quiet satisfaction.
There are no morals to be gleaned from this. My friend was not punished in any way for his pretentiousness. Instead, he got an amusing story he used to dine out on for years afterwards. At one of these dinners, he introduced me to a certain Mr. Rajinder Thind, of North Surrey, Vancouver. What happened thereafter is a whole different blogpost.
No comments:
Post a Comment