I immediately found out that for one thing it was not really necessary to learn Hindi to speak, at least not with the amount of focus and determination that I had applied to it; there are plenty of very good English speakers in India some that spoke better English than me in fact.
So here I am, terminal one of the Indira Gandhi International Airport, and I’ve discovered that I could quite easily have gotten by without knowing any Hindi words or Hindi phrases at all.
Culture shock is not exactly the right sort of way to explain what you find when you first land in India, you do definitely have to look beyond the crush of human and mechanical traffic, which can be very scary at first sight, but it is only first impressions, go past these and you are in a metropolis without a doubt, you find arts both static and performing, you are faced with awe inspiring monuments and museums along with some of the sub continents best food houses.
I must have been feeling so much better and so much more confident than a lot of the other Americans, Australians and English around me, they all seemed to look a bit bewildered and totally lost. I had at least tried to learn to speak Hindi language to some degree. I also had a Hindi language guide course in MP3 format so that I could continue to push on with my studies, It seemed that hardly any of the English speakers I had met so far, had even bothered to learn languages of the countries they visited, not even basic manners! How they survived is beyond me.
The reason for writing this post was originally to tell you how easy it was to learn Hindi to speak, it’s not hard compared to a lot of languages and if you bear with me I will come to that part, I just need to get some of India through my eyes down on paper first.
Arriving in mid January I knew to expect thick fog, firstly because I had been warned but also because I had done a fair bit of research (I do like to be prepared for most eventualities) but thick is another understatement I could hardly see my hand in front of my face at one point.
The transport systems here (all of them, road air and rail) are fantastic, fast and cheap they beggar belief. Yes beggars is another story but we’ll leave that one for now.
There are also other main languages spoken such as Punjabi and Urdu, that was fairly confusing at times but given longer I might have been able to master a lot more of each of them, I love to learn languages as you may have already figured.
New Delhi was built by the British as the capital of India whilst old Delhi is the capital of Islamic India. I found that as a visitor I could have the best of both worlds, each day I spent some time discovering some history at places like Jama Masjid, red Fort and the bazaars of old Delhi, then the rest of the day drinking cocktails and cappuccinos in the posh bars and cafes of new Delhi. There is almost everything you could imagine here to eat from Sashimi and pizzas (made on wood fires) to Idlis (rice cakes) and meaty Mughlai curries. The Smells as well as the Hindi words I had been learning were filling the air around me I felt heady and drunk on it all a lot of the time.
I was so happy I had taken the time and trouble to learn Hindi to speak, it stood me in good stead.