![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
For reasons I can only guess at, the waiter at Mumbai Grill decided to move me from the deuce right next to my cinephilic coworker to a four top across the room. But we were the only ones in the place, so I didn't feel too self-conscious about carrying on a conversation with him anyway. I sought confirmation that it was Lata Mangeshkar's voice shrieking from the speakers which prompted your man to tell me what film it was (Bade dil wala with Rishi Kapoor and Tina Ambani--which I was amused to hear him call a "very old movie" given that it's thirteen years younger than I am), bringing in Bollywood as the topic of conversation.
In the midst of this an older woman came in, sat at a table in the corner, and engaged the waiter in a negotiation regarding the tikka. Something about her accent caught my attention, so when my friend left I continued eavesdropping. To my surprise, I realised she was codeswitching English and Hindi. I caught enough to understand that she was asking about the name change so I repeated my joke about Shiv Sena threatening to smash the windows. We'd hardly begun chatting when she asked, "Have you been to India?" I confessed I hadn't and she said, "But you sound like an old hand!" Which is ironic, since my inculcation in South Asian culture is even shallower and more recent than my acquaintance with Ashkenazi Judaism. I found myself listing my mentors to somehow excuse how I was able to talk such a good game without ever having really learned the regs.
She is apparently an ABCD from San Francisco born to Punjabi Dilhiwale parents with UofC connexions. I was curious to learn more about her background but not sure how to do it without sounding too prying. She spoke of the Mahabharata as if it were as foreign to her as it is to me and recommended, of all things, a Louis Malle documentary. Neither "Gurdas Mann" or "Waris Shah" seemed to ring any bells for her.
In the midst of this an older woman came in, sat at a table in the corner, and engaged the waiter in a negotiation regarding the tikka. Something about her accent caught my attention, so when my friend left I continued eavesdropping. To my surprise, I realised she was codeswitching English and Hindi. I caught enough to understand that she was asking about the name change so I repeated my joke about Shiv Sena threatening to smash the windows. We'd hardly begun chatting when she asked, "Have you been to India?" I confessed I hadn't and she said, "But you sound like an old hand!" Which is ironic, since my inculcation in South Asian culture is even shallower and more recent than my acquaintance with Ashkenazi Judaism. I found myself listing my mentors to somehow excuse how I was able to talk such a good game without ever having really learned the regs.
She is apparently an ABCD from San Francisco born to Punjabi Dilhiwale parents with UofC connexions. I was curious to learn more about her background but not sure how to do it without sounding too prying. She spoke of the Mahabharata as if it were as foreign to her as it is to me and recommended, of all things, a Louis Malle documentary. Neither "Gurdas Mann" or "Waris Shah" seemed to ring any bells for her.