Recommended Reading
I really must read some Dostoevsky.
When people find out I was born in Russia, they often react in one of three ways:
1) “I thought you looked Russian.”
2) “Say something in Russian!”
3) “Dostoevsky is my favorite author. ”
I’m quick to respond to the first and second. (“Ya plocha gavaryu pa Ruskiy,” I say when asked to perform. “I speak Russian poorly” always impresses.) The last one leaves me mute. I nod. Sometimes I manage a “really?”
I don’t know squat about Dostoevsky. I briefly grappled with “Notes from Underground” in a high school English class but retained little more than the very handy phrase “existential angst.”
Yesterday I went to the bank, and I did a lot of nodding.
It was my first trip to an Indian bank for anything besides an ATM. I needed a demand draft -- a money order of sorts -- to secure a booking at a guesthouse in Pondicherry, the former French colony where I’ll be spending New Year’s Eve. I expected long lines, surly tellers and body-checking customers. My views on Indian “customer service” are no secret. Instead, I got a bank clerk versed in the collected works of Dostoevsky, a cup of coffee and complimentary stationery.
The Punjab National Bank branch I chose looked like a storefront bookie joint: cashiers behind metal grating, carpet worn to its burlap base, and grubby fans affixed to desks and walls. Rather than long lines, there were small clumps of customers at each counter. Behind the counter for demand drafts sat a man with a receding hairline and a spot of sandalwood paste between his brows. He showed me where to write my name and address, then summoned a bespectacled, grandfatherly security guard with a rifle slung over his shoulder. The guard escorted me to a cashier, who took my money and stamped my forms. Then it was back to the teller. I gave him my forms, and he offered me coffee.
“That’s OK,” I said, puzzled. Nobody else was drinking coffee. (I’ve been trying to cut back, too. After my last coffee-related entry, mom sent a gentle e-nag: “Do you think that is a little bit too much?”)
I took a seat on a couch pressed against a wall. It had wooden armrests and velour cushions with a jungle motif, reminding me simultaneously of babushka and college parties.
A woman brought me coffee.
I balanced the saucer on my lap and sipped the sweet, milky concoction. (Sorry, mom.) My teller looked up with a shy smile and raised a hand with fanned fingers, assuring me the wait wouldn’t be long. The security guard with the rifle whisked away my empty cup. When the teller finished, he waved me over.
“You are Russian?” he asked as he passed me the bank draft. My surname had tipped him off. He looked hopeful.
“Yes,” I told him, eliciting a smile so wide that I caught a glimpse of molars.
“Dostoevsky. I like him very much!”
I smiled and nodded.
“You know ‘The Idiot’? ‘Brothers Karamazov’?”
I nodded and prayed for an opportunity to slip in “existential angst.”
“I very much like all the Russian writers,” he said. “Dostoevsky. Tolstoy.”
He searched for a third, tapping his head.
“Pushkin?” I offered.
“Yes!”
That did it. I’d managed to mask my ignorance of Russian literature. I’d also made his day.
I asked for the nearest post office. He summoned the security guard, who disappeared for a minute and returned with a fresh envelope. Then the guard escorted me out of the bank and pointed the way to the post office.
I walked there, congratulating myself on completing a chore. Life as an expat is a series of small challenges: learn how to make a phone call, how to cross the street, how to buy a train ticket, how to haggle with rickshaw drivers. I’ll never blend in here, but after three months, I’m starting to feel streetwise.
I swaggered into the post office, envelope in hand. “Dang, I’m streetwise,” I thought to myself as I ran my tongue along the envelope flap.
And then I heard titters.
“Gum is there,” a postal employee snorted.
Several hands pointed me to a tin of slime. I studied the envelope flap. It didn’t have an adhesive strip. I dipped my index finger in the gum, sealed the envelope and wondered which of Dostoevsky’s masterpieces to tackle first. “The Idiot” sounded like a winner.
When people find out I was born in Russia, they often react in one of three ways:
1) “I thought you looked Russian.”
2) “Say something in Russian!”
3) “Dostoevsky is my favorite author. ”
I’m quick to respond to the first and second. (“Ya plocha gavaryu pa Ruskiy,” I say when asked to perform. “I speak Russian poorly” always impresses.) The last one leaves me mute. I nod. Sometimes I manage a “really?”
I don’t know squat about Dostoevsky. I briefly grappled with “Notes from Underground” in a high school English class but retained little more than the very handy phrase “existential angst.”
Yesterday I went to the bank, and I did a lot of nodding.
It was my first trip to an Indian bank for anything besides an ATM. I needed a demand draft -- a money order of sorts -- to secure a booking at a guesthouse in Pondicherry, the former French colony where I’ll be spending New Year’s Eve. I expected long lines, surly tellers and body-checking customers. My views on Indian “customer service” are no secret. Instead, I got a bank clerk versed in the collected works of Dostoevsky, a cup of coffee and complimentary stationery.
The Punjab National Bank branch I chose looked like a storefront bookie joint: cashiers behind metal grating, carpet worn to its burlap base, and grubby fans affixed to desks and walls. Rather than long lines, there were small clumps of customers at each counter. Behind the counter for demand drafts sat a man with a receding hairline and a spot of sandalwood paste between his brows. He showed me where to write my name and address, then summoned a bespectacled, grandfatherly security guard with a rifle slung over his shoulder. The guard escorted me to a cashier, who took my money and stamped my forms. Then it was back to the teller. I gave him my forms, and he offered me coffee.
“That’s OK,” I said, puzzled. Nobody else was drinking coffee. (I’ve been trying to cut back, too. After my last coffee-related entry, mom sent a gentle e-nag: “Do you think that is a little bit too much?”)
I took a seat on a couch pressed against a wall. It had wooden armrests and velour cushions with a jungle motif, reminding me simultaneously of babushka and college parties.
A woman brought me coffee.
I balanced the saucer on my lap and sipped the sweet, milky concoction. (Sorry, mom.) My teller looked up with a shy smile and raised a hand with fanned fingers, assuring me the wait wouldn’t be long. The security guard with the rifle whisked away my empty cup. When the teller finished, he waved me over.
“You are Russian?” he asked as he passed me the bank draft. My surname had tipped him off. He looked hopeful.
“Yes,” I told him, eliciting a smile so wide that I caught a glimpse of molars.
“Dostoevsky. I like him very much!”
I smiled and nodded.
“You know ‘The Idiot’? ‘Brothers Karamazov’?”
I nodded and prayed for an opportunity to slip in “existential angst.”
“I very much like all the Russian writers,” he said. “Dostoevsky. Tolstoy.”
He searched for a third, tapping his head.
“Pushkin?” I offered.
“Yes!”
That did it. I’d managed to mask my ignorance of Russian literature. I’d also made his day.
I asked for the nearest post office. He summoned the security guard, who disappeared for a minute and returned with a fresh envelope. Then the guard escorted me out of the bank and pointed the way to the post office.
I walked there, congratulating myself on completing a chore. Life as an expat is a series of small challenges: learn how to make a phone call, how to cross the street, how to buy a train ticket, how to haggle with rickshaw drivers. I’ll never blend in here, but after three months, I’m starting to feel streetwise.
I swaggered into the post office, envelope in hand. “Dang, I’m streetwise,” I thought to myself as I ran my tongue along the envelope flap.
And then I heard titters.
“Gum is there,” a postal employee snorted.
Several hands pointed me to a tin of slime. I studied the envelope flap. It didn’t have an adhesive strip. I dipped my index finger in the gum, sealed the envelope and wondered which of Dostoevsky’s masterpieces to tackle first. “The Idiot” sounded like a winner.
posted by Badass at 8:44 AM
2 Comments:
I read this post yesterday and proceeded to dream last night that we (the nyc girls) all went to visit you in India--and then watched a slide show of our trip! Your writing is clearly capturing my imagination!
You writing is like a beautiful river...it flows effortlessly and enriches us with humor and endless changing landscapes as it carries us gently downstream... I hope that is not verbose! My english teacher was always smacking me around the head for my verbosity :) one of your room-mates in the land of head wobbles and terrifying toilets
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