ABOVE: a busy sunday crowd inside red fort 

Lucky you, today I'm doing a double feature!

This past weekend I made my way to Old Delhi for the first time in the month I've been here. Old Delhi is very different from the area I stay in (South Delhi). It's much more crowded and primarily a Muslim area. The feel is completely different from the expat rich South Delhi. Old Delhi has alleys filled with restaurants that are dedicated to one particular dish and marketplaces that look just like the opening scene of Aladin. It's the kind of area that's so dense and can be a bit intense, but these are the experiences I really enjoy. 

Our mission this past Sunday was to visit Red Fort while browsing some marketplaces along the way. This was almost an all day affair. By the time we got to Red Fort, it was 12:30pm. We reached in the prime heat of the afternoon and we joined the line of a hundred or so others. It took at least 40 minutes before we were nearing the security point, at which point the lines broke into two. I realized that I heard something familiar, something very comforting and I began to eavesdrop on the conversation behind me. Within a few minutes, my suspicions were confirmed. In that crowd of 200 something people, I managed to find myself next to a family of Kannadigas (people who come from the southern state of Karnataka, like me). Before I could even think about it, I turned around and said to them in our native dialect (kannada) "Are you folks kannadigas?" They were, and for 10 minutes we shared this mutual feeling of comfort. We spoke bout why we were in Delhi and where we were from in Karnataka. Small world- turns out that not only were they from my city (Bangalore) but the daughter and grandchild live in MY neighborhood of Vijayanagar. We parted ways after the security check and I had a beaming smile for the next 15 minutes. 

In all these years, I never expected to react the way that I did. This sort of scenario is something I've seen my mom engage in for many years in the states. ANY time she sees someone else of Indian origin, she speaks in Hindi with them and finds out their story. Whenever I'm around, I poke a little fun at her for doing so. But this weekend I realized what that feeling was like...

Delhi is a city where you can get by with English, but Hindi is the spoken language. Growing up, we didn't speak Hindi, we spoke Kannada (my state dialect). While I can understand a bit of Hindi, as I've mentioned before, I'm not conversational (yet!) Truly, I think there is a difference when you don't speak the language you are surrounded by. If ever there's a moment where I forget that I am a foreigner here, I'm quickly reminded as I struggle to put a sentence together in Hindi. But I know I'm not a complete foreigner, India is my other home! And that moment at Red Fort when I met another Kannadiga, reminded me just that.

Of course, soon enough I will learn Hindi. And by the time I return to the states, I should be quite conversational. By this time next week, I should have my hindi tutor all set up!