Any place you visit it is the people that makes the city what it is, and the people of Varanasi are a delightful bunch. You'd find a very mixed crowd over there, different ethnicity, different religions, different regions. So to understand and appreciate the place I went and talked to as many people as I could.
I am a Malayali, and people, being little ignorant nincompoops, think that us Malayalis have terrible Hindi, it is very irritating. Yes I have confused the word nimbu for nariyal, yes it takes me a minute to figure out what a simple sentence means, yes I have listened intently when asked a question (not knowing that a question was being thrown at me), yes I act like I understood every word of what someone was saying in Hindi when I have no clue what was being said.... Ok maybe the ignorant nincompoops were a little tiny bit right. What I want to say though is that my primary aim of this journey was to see Varanasi through the eyes of its people and to achieve that I had to get to know the people, and these lovely people ONLY SPEAK SHUDH HINDI. I cannot comprehend non-shudh Hindi, so you can imagine the trouble I had with the shudh Hindi.
All said and done, it was a different experience trying to communicate with them and sharing stories with them. Even though there was a language barrier; the emotion with which the people spoke about their city did come out in their speech.
I am a Malayali, and people, being little ignorant nincompoops, think that us Malayalis have terrible Hindi, it is very irritating. Yes I have confused the word nimbu for nariyal, yes it takes me a minute to figure out what a simple sentence means, yes I have listened intently when asked a question (not knowing that a question was being thrown at me), yes I act like I understood every word of what someone was saying in Hindi when I have no clue what was being said.... Ok maybe the ignorant nincompoops were a little tiny bit right. What I want to say though is that my primary aim of this journey was to see Varanasi through the eyes of its people and to achieve that I had to get to know the people, and these lovely people ONLY SPEAK SHUDH HINDI. I cannot comprehend non-shudh Hindi, so you can imagine the trouble I had with the shudh Hindi.
All said and done, it was a different experience trying to communicate with them and sharing stories with them. Even though there was a language barrier; the emotion with which the people spoke about their city did come out in their speech.
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