Brinjal – The King of all Vegetables
Before the stock market crash of 2008, my company provided complimentary lunches to its employees, featuring diverse cuisine which would repeat on a weekly basis. One particular day, the menu offered an Italian dish – Eggplant lasagna.
As I picked some delicious eggplant lasagna, I noticed my American colleague heading towards the lunchroom.
“What’s on the menu today?” he asked me as he entered the lunchroom.
“It’s something made of Brinjal.” I replied.
“Made of what?” He asked with a puzzled expression.
“Brinjal, man! Brinjal!” I repeated.
Perplexed, he retorted, “What the hell is Brinjal?”
Now, I was equally confused. I couldn’t fathom how someone wouldn’t know what Brinjal was. After all, I was speaking English! Determined to solve the mystery, I took him to the lunchroom to show him the star of our meal, the Brinjal. Pointing towards the eggplant, I exclaimed, “Here. Look at this. This is Brinjal!”
With a sigh of relief, he replied, “Oh, you meant eggplant!”
I was left speechless. The connection between eggs and plants was beyond me. How could the two be related?
Well, Google came to the rescue in bridging the gap of our lingual differences.
What’s French about the French Fries?
[ Adapted from the main article What’s French about the French Fries? ]
One evening, I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to pick up some fast food from McDonald’s on my way home.
I drove up to the drive-through lane, joining a small queue of cars. It took only a few minutes for my turn to order, but I must confess, the experience was quite bizarre. Speaking to an unknown entity through a microphone and not being able to see the person taking my order was unsettling, especially since I had never done this before.
“Are you ready for your order, sir?” The lady on the other end asked politely.
“Yes. I would like large finger chips and coke, please.” I replied,
“I’m sorry but can you repeat the order, Sir?” She sounded puzzled.
“I would like large finger chips and coke, please,” I said again, this time louder.
“I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t have finger chips,” she replied.
I was annoyed that she had made me repeat the order and frustrated that she seemed unfamiliar with her own menu. I could clearly see the picture of finger chips on the menu displayed on the giant panel that housed the speaker and microphone for order.
“What are you talking about? I see it on the menu,” I retorted, my irritation evident.
There was a momentary pause on the speaker before the lady asked, “Can you describe to me how it looks, sir?”
“Of course. It’s thin and long, like fingers, and it’s made with potatoes,” I replied confidently, convinced that she must be new to the fast-food industry and unaware of the most basic item on the menu.
“Umm… are you talking about French fries, sir?” she asked with a hint of sarcasm in her tone, correcting me.
Not being able to see the person taking my order was a clear disadvantage. I imagined that she must be mocking me like, “Finger chips… hahaha… look at this dumbass,” while sitting in her booth.
“I guess I am,” I replied timidly as I looked at the picture of the item I had ordered. It clearly wrote “French fries” beside the picture. I had not even bothered to read the name, or I must say, the American name.
“What’s wrong with calling them finger chips? Why do they have to complicate things? And what’s so French about French fries, anyway?” I was still analyzing the sense behind it as she handed over the packet to me. The order was ready, almost instantly.
“Whatever,” I muttered, munching on my “finger chips,” and drove away.
A Crumbly Conundrum: The Cookie-Biscuit Identity Crisis
[ Adapted from the main article A Crumbly Conundrum: The Cookie-Biscuit Identity Crisis ]
One morning, I was relishing in a pack of Parle-G biscuits from India, paired with tea for breakfast when Anyoso curiously approached me, drawn to the intermittent crunching sound.
“What is that thing you are munching on?” She asked, her inquisitive gaze fixated on the packet of biscuits.
“Oh, this? This is a biscuit. I usually have it with tea in the morning.” I replied, offering her a piece.
“I love biscuits. May I have one as well?” She inquired.
“Absolutely! Here you are.” I said, extending my arm towards her.
However, as soon as she took a bite of the Parle-G biscuit, she vehemently rejected my notion of a biscuit, exclaiming that it was not one. “Of course, it is! See, it’s written here,” I pointed to the label.
“Parle-G – Gluco Biscuits” it read.
Yet, she remained utterly confused, determined to show me what a real biscuit looked like. Retrieving a packet from her shelf, she handed me a mini-burger-shaped confectionery, which left me puzzled.
“Is this a biscuit or is that a biscuit?” I asked, feeling perplexed. “Then what do you call this?” I inquired further.
She took another bite of the Parle-G for confirmation before confidently asserting,
“This is a cookie!”
As it turned out, it was a classic case of the British versus American English dialects. If the American Revolution war was not enough, here was another one, this time in the confines of my apartment, for the language.
Metric vs Imperial: A Transatlantic Rift
As a newcomer to the United States, one of the most daunting challenges I encountered was adapting to the Imperial system of measurement. Having grown accustomed to the British Metric system in India, that is kilometers for distance, Celsius for temperature, and kilograms for weight, acclimating to the vastly different mile, Fahrenheit, and pound measurements proved to be arduous and confusing.
Initially, I found it difficult to grasp the correlation between the numerical values assigned to weather conditions and the actual temperature. When people would remark, “What a beautiful, sunny day! It’s 85 degrees out there,” I was left scratching my head in confusion. Thankfully, my Indian heritage and the strong mathematics skills allowed me to perform quick mental calculations, enabling me to keep pace with the unfamiliar system.
Prior to the prevalence of GPS technology, seeking directions was another trial. I would ask for directions like:
“Excuse me, Sir, how far is the mall from here?”, to which the response would often be, “It’s about 15 minutes away.”
As someone accustomed to measuring distance in kilometers, this response left me utterly confused. In India, it is common to talk distance in terms of kilometers than in terms of time, and the time required to travel that distance is derived through mental calculation because we had to take into account the chaotic traffic conditions which varied extensively depending on the time of the day. So, I would rephrase my question to align with my own frame of reference, asking, “How many miles from here, Sir?”
More often than not, this question would leave them flummoxed, as the traffic conditions in the US are pretty predictable so most Americans used time as reference rather than the actual distance.
Another conundrum I faced was in relation to weight measurements. Every time I visited a physician, the nurse would ask me to disclose my weight, to which I would respond in kilograms, much to their confusion. To avoid this communication impediment, I had crafted a nifty conversion table in my brain which would allow me to do a quick mental math in such situations.
1 pound equals 0.453 kilograms
1 mile equals 1.609 kilometers
1 inch equals 2.54 centimeters
32F equals 0C
And it didn’t just end there. I also found myself grappling with the differences in date formatting. In India, we use the format dd/mm/yy, whereas the United States follows mm/dd/yy. This proved to be particularly challenging when filling out important forms and documents because when both the date and month were under 12, my mind would naturally follow the Indian format at first glance. For instance, 10th September 2008 would be written as 09/10/2008 in a document in American format while my mind would interpret it as 10/09/2008 in Indian format. This seemingly small difference caused me so many wasted papers and recalled emails.
These cultural nuances went on for years until I became relatively comfortable with the Imperial system of calculation. And just as the imperial system became my second nature, I had to reverse my learning when I moved to Canada later for a period of time as Canada follows the metric system. I was back to square one.
