Building Bridges

The limits of my language means the limits of my world - Ludwig Wittgenstein

I de-boarded the air-plane to enter a new world, and my first encounter with the place gave me a shock of my life. I could not understand anything around. There were sounds unheard and the script unseen. It seemed like being lost in a magic world of signs which few others were easily able to comprehend than me. They gave me an entrance form which I could not read and asked me questions in an unknown accent. Till I reached my new place of residence, I was numb. The feeling of being illiterate entered into me so much, that when a fine lady in a bank handed over a sticker to me to sign over it, I actually thought that she was asking for my fingerprint. She was aghast and did a hand action for signature when I started to put my fingerprint on it. “In English ??” I naively asked, for which she nodded her head, and cheerily said thank you, which was thankfully translated to me by my tutor. 

At the end of that day, I had a residence card, a bank passbook, a medical insurance and hundreds of other instructions in fine A4 size papers, none of which I could actually read and it was utterly frightening. There were train announcements which I could not understand, station names I could not read and supermarkets filled of everything I needed, but couldn't buy due to fear of mistakes. As the second day ended in this new world, I ended up buying Ajinomoto instead of sugar, Sesame crusher instead of Pepper mill, Soy milk instead of Milk and got lost twice in a station looking for familiar signages. It seemed as if I had suddenly lost the most valuable gifts of languages which I possessed for all these years. Then, I realized that language is not just an established sense of words script and grammar with a vast universe of hand actions, but actually a bridge to connect to others and their world. A vent for feelings, without which, one would be crushed under the clump of his own ideas. On that day I decided that I wanted to build a new bridge. Although I was not aware that while I was constructing this bridge to connect with them, there were many others who were building bridges to connect to me. 

She was standing next to me in an overcrowded Ginza line train one evening, her head leaning over a book in one hand, and strap hanger clasped in the other to keep her stable and secure in a jerky train journey.She was wearing something really fashionable, out from some fashion store, usual dressing in this country.  After a while, I noticed, that she was reading a self help book aimed at learning English. At a major station, the crowd suddenly disappeared, and we sat next to each other. I asked her, if the book was good. She replied that she is struggling with the language, and with its completely new concepts. She talked in slow melancholy fashion remembering sentence structures and words. It was my first conversation with a complete stranger in a new country, and what we discussed were two languages, which both of us didn't claim to be our own. The final station came and we parted ways.

Building the new bridge
Photo:Abhijit Datey

Everyday since then, while I read strange looking picture characters in train, and try to write them in my phone dictionary to find a meaning out of them, there are many others around me reading Self help books, trying to understand the fundamentals of English. It seems, as if there are multiple spaces of thoughts and knowledge separated by unknown waters, and all of us are trying to build bridges from one space to the other. Bridges of languages, to know each other, to penetrate into wider spaces of feelings and thoughts yet unknown. Everyday, we apply some cement of grammar, some blocks of vocabulary, with a sprinkling of tonal variation and a paint of script to make it more strengthened, and the process continues. There are of course construction mistakes. A strange word usage, a funny translation or a wrong sentence structure, but there is fun in it. The fun of imagining a destination, and the excitement of reaching it.  Until then, there are signs everywhere but less meaning, sounds everywhere but less understanding and a vast ocean of knowledge yet to be unearthed. 

Pamphlets for an illiterate buyer!
Photo: Abhijit Datey