Found in Translation

Anand, my cook, does not speak much English. He’s learning a few words b/c of me but our conversations at night tend to be of a comical nature. We should have our own sitcom.

He sent me a text last week. It was in Hindi so I took one look at it and ignored it. The following day, he sent me another text. Thinking that I had missed something important, I took my phone to a work friend and said, “Can you translate this?”

She looked at it and said, “What is this?”

“It’s not in Hindi?” I asked. She shook her head. Thinking he had written to me in his native tongue I asked a few people if they recognized the language and could translate. Everyone I asked responded with: “I don’t know this language.”

The lack of knowledge on the langauge didn't seem weird to me as India has 22 major and upwards of 200 languages total. What struck me as strange was that Anand would write to me in a language that I could not have easily translated. It was clear I was missing something and I felt compelled to figure out the mystery of this text. I looked again at the message: Meem.tuomaro.es.kameeg.es.nokameg.peelis.meesis.

I started to speak it phonetically, and that’s when it hit me. If I spoke it like he spoke English, it became:

Meem.tuomaro.es.kameeg.es.nokameg.peelis.meesis.
Ma’am, tomorrow is coming is no coming please message. (should he come tomorrow?) I went back to his first text:

Meem.keefoor.sikroote.oofecs.TEUKUY.
Maam, key for security office. Thank you. (He left key for my apt. with office security).

There are a few ways to make me feel guilty and this one did it, tenfold. I added 'buying a Hindi dictionary' to my list of to do for the weekend.