Incredible India!

I feel like I have somehow managed to cross time barriers and have arrived at the scene of the Tower of Babel. For once I feel so alone and lost! Im currently in Maharashtra and they speak so many languages here!

English is not the default language on the streets and I find myself raising my voice and using my hands and legs to demonstrate to the rickshaw drivers where I want to go and how to get directions to places. I find that when I am directed by someone who actually speaks English I am like a thirsty donkey that has finally been given leave to drink as much as it can:)

India is a great place to be and I am enjoying every minute of my stay here! Its a lot like Nigeria in many ways. Sights I enjoy looking at are the women in their Sari and Salwakamis (im sure i spelt that worng), the little kids with their beautiful eyes, the ladies with their long hair, the rickshaws and their competitions with the buses on the road, I could go on and on!

I finally got on the Mumbai train yesterday and though it was not as rowdy as I had been told to expect I was rewarded with a taste of how rough it can be, I got hit on the side of my head with an elbow by a passenger struggling to get on the train and developed a one sided headache. I have so far visited the gateway of India, the Taj Hotel site of the attacks by terrorists over a year ago, Its difficult to imagine that anything like that occurred, it is so beautiful.

Ill put up pictures soon, but for now Namaste!

Comments

  1. Unknown10:31 AM

    Olaoluwatomi
    i guess this is an advanced travelling
    not like that you did in Nigeria
    now u have gone INTERNATIONAL
    lol

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bonny Island!

Hi guys, this doctor is in little heaven (not London, London no fine like this). Ill rewind my story for the benefit of my viewers (sorry readers! Does anyone read my blog:). Anyway I was chatting with my cousin who works on Bonny Island and she invited me to spend the weekend with her. My journey started from the boat jetty. After a briefing on safety rules we were loaded on the boat. For some strange reason I wasnt scared, the last time I was on a boat was over a decade ago but I had no qualms about the trip, it took about 2hours but it was smooth! Arriving in Bonny, my cousin came to pick me up, my first sight of the island was of concrete, metal pipes and other materials, it didnt look like a place one would living in. But when we got to the residential quarters all that changed. It looked like I was out of Nigeria, actually I would say I was. The plase was actually clean, neat and beautiful. The streets were well tarred no pot holes, the houses were neatly arranged, the entire est
Read more

Death III

Image
In recounting my near misses, I can't but think of how many other misses I am unaware of. As a child, I was the only one who was hospitalized a few times compared to my siblings and cousins. I cannot remember if I ever felt sick enough to be at deaths door, but I do know I disliked getting injections. During one of my trips to the hospital I was to receive a Novalgin injection, for those of you old enough to remember Novalgin, it was the most painful torturous injection ever. I screamed hell and blue murder as the nurse approached with a Novalgin shot. 'I don't take injections', I lamented in my most piteous voice, you would think anyone with a heart would see the tears and back down but those nurses were a special breed. After a few minutes of my temporary madness, my father was summoned, it took just one look from him and I accepted the drilling of the syringe through my marrow (that was what it felt like) without as much as a squeak. The feeling Novalgin gave your bu
Read more

My Mother Tongue!

I grew up speaking English as my first language and I can tell you that is one fact I am not proud about. I remember once when we were much younger shouting out the only Yoruba words we knew as children 'olosi', 'oloriburuku' etc. My grandmother came out of the house hurriedly to put a stop to our foolishness, what on earth did we think we were doing? she asked, our reply still puts a smile on my face 'we are speaking Yoruba' we replied. My lack of proficiency in speaking Yoruba ( I can write it:) is revealed anytime I speak to my patients. When our conversation is not just me answering in monosyllables, I begin to speak rapidly in my mother tongue but by the end of my first two sentences, I hear myself stuttering and stammering and Im wondering if the patients don't think this doctor is having a sudden attack of catatonia! My Yoruba teacher in Secondary school summed up my Yoruba speaking prowess to my parents during an open day 'She is a good student b
Read more