Insourcing

This morning I decided to make my first serious attempt at learning conversational Hindi. Since I wasn't able to find a class offering the 101s of the Hindi language, I was delighted to have stumbled across a podcast aptly titled:

Learn Hindi from Bollywood Movies. India Style.

With an astounding 75 episodes available to me for free, I felt tremendously encouraged that I may reach a level of some basic proficiency by the time I next travel to India. So I began with:

Episode 1. Outsourcing.

At a glance, the episode title seemed odd. I was kinda expecting the first lesson to be named in a manner that would insinuate that a basic "Hello. My name is ... " or "Thank you but ..." pedagogical scheme might be followed. Instead, I got this:

A Shaft type music intro lasting almost 3 minutes followed by a man with a quintessentially proper British-Indian accent declaring that many Bollywood films have real world practical applications. Next he urged the listener to imagine themselves running an outsourcing center in India and questioning what you might do if you found your employees taking too many cigarette or tea breaks causing larger than usual wait times. He insisted that you set matters right by screaming the following while in the midst of a sea of cubicles making sure that no employee dare ever take a cigarette or tea break again.

Cue in film excerpt of a very rabid and dramatic moment from the 1975 film Sholay. Cut in our host/teacher

IN HINDI (fast, sounds like): Mabiterehunkehasumkhatakhetahee ...

TRANSLATION: I swear on your blood ...

This partial exclamation is promptly dissected by our host. What blood is this? It doesn't matter. It could be the blood of any person you so desire. The important thing is to swear sincerely on that person's blood. And so he continues

IN HINDI (also fast, sounds like): ... eekhekuchunnchunnkemaruga!

TRANSLATION: ... I will single out every one of you and kill you.

So that's: Mabiterehunkehasumkhatakhetaheeeekhekuchunnchunnkemaruga!
I swear on your blood, I will single out every one of you and kill you!

Brilliant. I feel confident that I will succeed. But what do I tell these guys?

Idyllic

I don't want to seem too flippant about timings, especially when it comes to such considerations as not wearing white cargoes after Labor Day or posting photos of the aforementioned holiday in an untimely manner. Thus, without further delay of conscience, I'm posting a series of images from an overnight trip to Williamsville, Vermont — home to one defunct general store, a few white houses, a church-for-sale and the best swimming hole this side of New England.

What lead me to this little town? A promise to a friend, an itch to get out of Boston, a narrowing river, a clear blue sky and a freshly tired / inspected car.

What struck me about this place? A lingering absence. The stillness of moderate disrepair. A feeling of being at the epicenter of the remembered forgotten. This is a place that would fall comfortably onto the descending arch of the curved line that graphs the seven ages of man — a dot somewhere between the fifth and the sixth.