Working Abroad

Indians working abroad is a perfectly normal situation. Nowadays you might find more and more Indians abroad. And their success in living anywhere in the world comes from the fact that they are great survivors.

Soviet Russia was one of India’s friends aand Indo soviet scientific and cultural exchanges were common. Raj Kapoor had a large fan following in erstwhile USSR. People from the countries cooperated on different levels. Exchange of knowledge, culture and science meant that the Soviets visited India and Indians visited Russia. Let me recount the experiences of one such group.

Makahanlal Prasad was part of a team of metallurgical engineers who were sent by the Indian government to train at the soviet steel plants. Prior to the trip to USSR, all the team members were given a crash course in Russian language. The group leader was Vikas Bhide who had a Diploma in Russian and spoke fluent Russian. Upon landing in Leningrad, now called st. Petersburg, they were introduced to their Russian guide, Mr. Nicolas Petrov who spoke fluent English. Thus the team started their three month long stay in the USSR.

As was wont to happen in such trips, after a while, a smaller cluster of friends within the team wanted to explore on their own. And so, Makhanlal and friends went exploring. After a while, they were hungry and they found themselves in a different part of the town far away Mr. Bhide or Mr.n Petrov to guide them to a restaurant. But they found one on their own and sat down to order. The menu card was more like ‘Kaala akshar bhains barabar’ ( Hindi saying literally meaning that the printed word was equal to water buffaloes, can’t make out one from another)for them. So they racked their brains to get the name of Chicken in Russian. But hunger had affected our little Indian troop adverselyand created a momentary memory loss for all of them.

Gurjeet Singh desperately said, “Arre yaar, murgi yaad karte karte nani yaad aa gayi”
Makhanlal said brightly, “Aschcha yaad dilaya, Yaar ande ko kya bolte hain?” ( what do you call an egg in Russian)
Gurjeet said, “yayotz”
“And mother”
“Math”

So, the order went as Math yayotz

The roly poly waitress rolled with laughter at the order. And makhanlal and friends got what they wanted. After a sumptuous meal, they remembered to than the waitress and the Manager. Shaking hands with the manager, Makahanlal said, “Sabaka, sabaka”. Others followed suit.

Returning to the place where the rest of them wer, Makhanlal and Gurjeet told the leader that the manager was so overcome with emotion that he did not react when they thanked him , “Sabaka’.

Bhide and Petrov started guffawing. They could not stop for a while. When they did, they said in unision, “Good thingthat they did not beat you guys up”
“Why should they beat us? We paid the bill correctly”

“Sabaka means dog. You should have said Speceba”

Dedicated to all strugglers in the foreign lands.