Ok, so I'm delaying my photos of Udaipur another day in order to tell you this story. Yesterday was the first full day in my Delhi apartment. Anika is at work from 9 - 5:30, so I have become something of a housewife, taking care of the errands, doing the cooking, setting up our room and buying the necessities. Anyhow, I took a break from all this in the afternoon to have a coffee meeting (very interesting guy who started an NGO up in the hills). After we talked business for a while, we hung out for a while, chatting in Hindi, walking around. Eventually he decided he wanted to take me for chaat: something that can only be described as Indian fast food, or maybe as street food, anyhow. His friend came to meet us and we decided to play a prank on him in honor of April Fool's day.
So there are a couple of things you should know before I continue this story. One is that April Fool's day is not really a thing in India except that there are mass texts and people are aware of the jokes that google does etc. The second thing I should tell you is that this friend of my friend is a cop. That might not mean anything to the Americans, but the Indians I tell this story to visibly shudder at this declaration: "you played a trick on a cop". Etc etc.
We went over what to do. I suggested that we pretend I don't speak Hindi until he says something embarrassing and then trap him, but we decided that was too mean. Then we thought maybe we would convince him I was Indian. My friend suggested I try to convince him in Hindi that we had met before. In any case, I knew that the real shock/joke was going to be my Hindi speaking at all.
So we went with the last option. I went up to him and said in Hindi, "Rahul, it's been too long, how have you been, you don't remember me, etc etc". And he literally does a 90 head turn double take and says, "she speaks Hindi?" The funniest thing about the whole experience was that while eating etc, every time I would say something in Hindi (which was often, we were three people having a conversation), or made any reference to Indian culture, he was amusingly shocked all over again. The better April Fool's joke would have been if after all that I didn't speak Hindi, but it was super fun anyhow. And now I have a new friend! Who happens to be a great guy, an honest cop and runs the police station for the area that includes my neighborhood! And the chaat was the bomb...
Love,
Violet
So there are a couple of things you should know before I continue this story. One is that April Fool's day is not really a thing in India except that there are mass texts and people are aware of the jokes that google does etc. The second thing I should tell you is that this friend of my friend is a cop. That might not mean anything to the Americans, but the Indians I tell this story to visibly shudder at this declaration: "you played a trick on a cop". Etc etc.
We went over what to do. I suggested that we pretend I don't speak Hindi until he says something embarrassing and then trap him, but we decided that was too mean. Then we thought maybe we would convince him I was Indian. My friend suggested I try to convince him in Hindi that we had met before. In any case, I knew that the real shock/joke was going to be my Hindi speaking at all.
So we went with the last option. I went up to him and said in Hindi, "Rahul, it's been too long, how have you been, you don't remember me, etc etc". And he literally does a 90 head turn double take and says, "she speaks Hindi?" The funniest thing about the whole experience was that while eating etc, every time I would say something in Hindi (which was often, we were three people having a conversation), or made any reference to Indian culture, he was amusingly shocked all over again. The better April Fool's joke would have been if after all that I didn't speak Hindi, but it was super fun anyhow. And now I have a new friend! Who happens to be a great guy, an honest cop and runs the police station for the area that includes my neighborhood! And the chaat was the bomb...
Love,
Violet
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