Namaskar!
Aap kaise hai.n?

Haa.n, mujhko Hindi aati hai, lekin thodii-sii. Maine usey kitaab se seekha. I suppose I could try to go on writing this whole post in Hindi, but my knowledge is not great. In fact, it's pretty lousy. The above is pretty much where my knowledge ends. It has been enough to  impress people, though.

Even a year ago, I did know the basic hello-how-are-you, but  I completely lost confidence after an attempt to say it to the woman running the Indian delicatessen. I would write down her response,  only she said it at the same speed that  space shuttles use to escape gravity.
I replied to this in the best way possible: I smiled weakly and nodded. She gave me five samosas.
Thereafter, I decided to wait until I could actually speak a bit of Hindi before I tried my hand at it again.

Now, I had bought a Hindi guide. Now I felt I could actually speak a bit. I went to see Taj Mahal. The cinema was empty: it was a Friday afternoon. After the film, I prowled the nearby bookstore, which was run by Indians, and bought a magazine. While paying, I said to the owner,
"Aap kaise hai.n?" He beamed at me.
"Accha," he answered. I felt satisfied to receive an answer I understood. He then, however, went on to ask a question at a speed that also launched shuttles into outer space. The only word I did pick up was "Indian", and I decided that his question was not, "Are you Indian?" - I had managed to convince the clerks at the cinema I was Indian, but he was Desi!
I replied, once again, in the best way possible: just smiled weakly, and nodded.
"So what language do you speak?" he continued. "Gujarati, Hindi...?
That brought me back on track.
"Hindi," I answered.

In Thailand, I found myself suddenly lusting to speak Hindi. It was literally starting to take over my tongue. At a restaurant one night, I told the waitress that I wanted a salmon steak aur a lemonade. My parents gave me a confused look.
"You can have them both, you know," my father said.
Happily, I found my chance the next day, at a cellphone shop. My father had destroyed his phone trying to extract his sim-card. Now that he had his sim-card, he wanted a phone to put it into. I waited in the shop. An Indian happened to sit down next to me, and began to tell me how some political problem in South Thailand led to his phone being locked for inexplicable reasons. Happily, this was a person whose mother had probably told him not to talk to strangers, but never really listened. I replied to this long story in the best way I could.
"Accha," I nodded. The man squinted at me.
"Sorry, where are you from?" he asked.
"South Africa," I said.
"Oh." He shook his head, and decided I didn't just say what he thought I did. He was from Nepal, he told me.
"You're from Nepal?" I gasped. "Accha!" Again he squinted at me.
"Sorry, where are you originally from?" he asked.
"Israel," I answered. Again, he decided, that I could not have just said 'accha'. After all, how many Israelis know that word? So I decided to take things a step further.
"Nepal kaisa desh hai?"
He stared at me as if I had turned into a flamingo. He had clearly finally reached a conclusion solid enough for him to accept.
"Aha! So you do speak Hindi!" he cried out.

My lust to speak Hindi did not fade. If anything, it strengthened. I once found myslef in a lift with an Iranian immigrant to America. I tried to ask her if she understood Urdu in Hindi, but it came out more as a weak mumble. She smiled weakly and shook her head. This was either because she didn't understand Urdu, or because she didn't understand what I said. The fact that I'm not able to write down whatever I said suggests the latter.

I received another chance to try correct myself at the airport, where my parents and I were sitting next to two dark skinned women talking a strange language. My mother was certain it was an Indian language. I was certain it was a Germanic language. Eventually, my dad, tired of our bickering, asked them.
"Dutch," the woman replied. "But with a tiny bit of Hindi." When we told them we were from South Africa, they asked me if I spoke Afrikaans. I tried to ask them in reply if they spoke Hindi fluently, and again embarassed myself:
"Haa.n, lekin aap bole Hindi?" is actually pretty far from the mark, and the two women replied with roars of laughter.

On our flight to Hong Kong, I found myself across the aisle from an Indian woman and her son. Still lusting to speak Hindi, I tried greeting the son after we landed. This succeeded in completely confusing him. I helped the woman take her luggage down from the overhead compartment. She asked me if I was transferring directly to the flight to Johannesburg - she had probably picked up my accent.
"Nahi.n," I replied. "We're staying in Hong Kong for ek day, aur phir Johannesburg ko returning. Malum hai any acche hotels?" I asked. As I mentioned before, Hindi was starting to control my tongue.
"Well, we stayed at the Miramax hotel. It was really nice. Just be careful - things aren't cheap here," she said.
"Accha, shukriya," I answered.
"Sorry, what religion do you follow?" she then asked me.
"Culture-creative," I answered.
"In the English or Hindu way?"
I grinned. "What gave it away?"
"You're trying to talk to me in Hindi," she replied, "and I don't understand a word!"

We later caught a shuttle to our hotel. Obviously, it wasn't much of a hotel, because there were only four of us on the shuttle: my parents and I, and a fair-skinned girl. I started some light conversation with her, asking her where she was from, and  for how long she was travelling. It turned out she was from America, and was only staying in Hong Kong for a couple of days before she flew to India. Eventually, I formed the question "do you speak Hindi?" properly:
"To kya aap Hindi kahe?"
"I understand it, since I used to live in Delhi." she answered. "That was actually really good. Can I call you sometime? I want to talk to you in Hindi! Practice ho jayanga tumhara!!!"