Baagunava? Baagunanu!

Though we’ve only been in Hyderabad for 5 full days now, it feels like we have been here for weeks.  I’m already used to wearing my airy salwar kameez in the uncomfortable heat, dodging through narrow gaps in the chaos that is Hyderabadi traffic, and eating dosas and upma for breakfast.  While it isn’t my first visit to this fascinating city ( more like my eighth or ninth since my second birthday) it is the first time that I haven’t been staying with my grandparents.  The Duke Engage team is living in a set of apartments (or flats as the Indians would say) in the heart of Hitec City, right next to tech companies such as Google, Oracle, Dell etc. It’s quite a different experience from the one I’m used to in the older parts of the city.  But I can’t complain because our living arrangements are fabulous!  I will say that I am itching to practice my Hindi (and my bargaining skills of course).  Hopefully I’ll get to kill two birds with one stone during our trip to the bazaars of Old City this weekend!

So today we had our first language class with expert linguist Dr. Giridhar Rao, or Giri as we know him.  I learned a ton of useful phrases in Telugu — the language of choice for most of the children in both the  Nirmal Nagar, and Sri Sai Nagar schools.  (And a little bit of Esperanto as well, but more about that later. )  We learned Telugu commands such as “curcho” which means “sit down” and “aagoo” which means “stop” — both very useful phrases when dealing with hundreds of hyper, supercharged 5-10 year olds.   Telugu is a world apart from Hindi, so for most of us (except for Avi and Manoj) its a very, very foreign language.  I feel as if I’m learning phonetics all over again, with the soft t’s pronounced “th” and the hard “d’s” in words such as “thinundy” (which means eat).   But I think if we work at it we’ll catch on in no time.  Then we can impress the kids and the teachers like Soren impressed our Telugu speaking maid earlier this evening, with phrases like “Bagunava? (How are you?) to which she responded with a huge grin and an emphatic “Baagunanu!” (I am very well!)