Beyond language

As soon as I step out of the airport in Jakarta I meet this very pleasant and extremely chatty lady at the cab reception desk. After she gets the taxi arranged, she asks me where I am from? Even this question she can barely put across, but after some stumbling I understand her question and reply, Sri Lanka, she replies "oh Australia". I corrected "no I am from Sri Lanka". Then I asked her whether she has heard a country by the name of Sri Lanka, she gives me a sheepish grin and says "No".

Then she wants to show her smartness and says, "Close to Hindustan?" I ask "you mean India?". She replies "yes". I said that was a good guess! She then said, the only thing I know about India is "Shahruk Khan". Then to find out she has a hindi movie craze. She can barely speak english, I doubt that she understands english sub titles or any hindi. But still seems to have crossed the language barrier on this.

After this incident I went around my work after forgetting about this. Few mins back I stepped into a taxi. He was tuning his radio and on one of the channels they were playing something which sounded like "aaroomalae" song, I wanted to tell him to let that song play. But I didn't, but to my amazement the guy himself reversed the dial in his radio and stopped at that song, the song was indeed aaroomalae. He didn't understand a word but was enjoying the music. Cleverly after that song he opted to change the channel.

Seems like Indian artists had done a world of good to reach people whom wouldn't have been accessed by usual means. Art beyond language!

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone