Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Random notes from trip

Nationalities that friendly Moroccans attributed to moi and MR: India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, America, South America, Cambodia, England, France, Spain, Morocco. To be fair, it was MR who confused the hell out of them. I get India, Sri Lanka and sometimes Ethiopia if its someone totally clueless but that's about it. MR, on the other hand, could be at home anywhere between Brazil and Delhi, so no wonder the Moroccans got totally confused seeing us together. Most times, if I weren't around, people would just start talking to her in Arabic. I tried conning a few people that we were really sisters but no one was conned. Anyway, MR's masterplan now is to learn Spanish properly, enrol in the secret service and become Mata Hari.

Language issues: My high school French did not work mostly because I remembered only utterly useless words like pont and quatre-vingt. I think I now know more Arabic than French, thanks to the 23 Urdu words I still remember. For the most part, we had to make do with sign language and MR's Spanish. We survived.

Three most common words shouted at us: (Atleast 222 times a day)
1. Ind(j)ian!
2. Namaste!
3. Shah Rukh Khan!

Closely followed by: Zindagi, Mohabat, Amitabh Bachan.

Three most common songs sung when we were in the vicinity:
1. Ye mera India, I love you India
2. Tujhe dekha tho ye jana sanam
3. Dil to pagal hai, dil deewana

I never thought this day would come but well, I think I am starting to look at Bollywood in a completely different light now.

3 comments:

Space Bar said...

They've watched the old Don or the new one? So much fun!

And jew meet Rick?

Veena said...

Space bar: They have seen both. They were talking about movies that we had no clue about. Total comey.

No, didn't spend too much time in Casa, so no Rick. Though you know, if he was anything like the other we met, he would also have Pardes ka theme as his ringtone.

Anonymous said...

we got similar reaction in Turkey and Egypt. People shouting out Amitabh Bacchan, Shah Rukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai....and of course, they wanted to know whether we were from England or America, so that they could charge us firang rates. Every time we said India, we actually got cheaper fares!