Friday 9^th November

I found such a nice long list of words which should be in the English language yesterday, in between being busy BUSY at work.  I did need the odd moment of peering at this and that on the internet, to clear my head a bit…

This one was particularly good. :

Arigata-meiwaku (Japanese): An act someone does for you that you didn’t want to have them do and tried to avoid having them do, but they went ahead anyway, determined to do you a favor, and then things went wrong and caused you a lot of trouble, yet in the end social conventions required you to express gratitude.

I think we have all been in in this sort of awkward social situation and have wanted to throttle certain people for their unwanted helpfulness.  I had similar occasions on the boat, when we had men - some, not all! - on board.  They would rush to remove ropes from my dear little delicate girly hands…oh no, I might get hurt!  Surely I should go and sit in a corner, in a neat and ladylike manner, and let them do it, even if I could tell they were doing it ALL WRONG… (And, by the way, what did they think happened when they weren’t there??  We spent 90% of our time with just two of us; did they think poor Pete had to rush about like a madthing doing every single task on board?) I am an obliging sort of person, so I would nearly always drop the rope and go and sit in my corner, but it did rankle just slightly that I had to say thank you… Pete, to his credit, never does this.  He always expects me to be on the other end of a rope, and, with touching faith, to be doing it efficiently and correctly.)

And I rather think the latest 2006 episode of our Indian Saga is another example of Arigata-meiwaku!

India #14

We got back in plenty of time to get on the train, and joined the huge milling crowd.  It is always amazing to see how many people get on and then off these trains; it looks like an impossible number, always.  But the trains are very long, and a lot of people squeeze into them, quite swiftly and efficiently.  We didn’t need porters; as I have said, we each had manageable luggage.  But somehow a posse of coolies swooped on us and firmly grasped our luggage.  Well they got mine; I was wheeling it along rather than carrying it on my back, so they got it easily out of my grip.  From then on it was all BIFF.  We had found our carriage, and were ready to get on, but the coolies were fighting vociferously, and physically, for the privilege of putting our luggage up the steps.  We all got quite annoyed; we didn’t need help, had negotiated the luggage thing and the carriage thing, thank you very much, please go away now.  But no!  We would have been quite happy to hand over a few rupees to the two original porters, but by now there were about six, all shouting and throwing punches at each other, and we thought we were going to miss the train – trains, amazingly enough, are very punctual in India and if the train is scheduled to go at 12.02, it does, no mucking around!  Pete and Vish were cross; they wrestled our cases away, shoved them onto the train, gave TWO of the coolies 20 rupees each and refused to listen to the rest of them who were shouting that we owed them A HUNDRED each.  We were the only foreigners on the train, as far as we could tell, and there was a large and appreciative audience.  None of them would have paid more than one rupee to any of the coolies, I am sure!  From then on we had a policy of saying NO to all coolies; we didn’t want any more rows and ructions.