Ever since my wife and I arrived in New York, we’ve felt like complete strangers. Utter strangers. The problem is that hardly anyone here speaks our language - English.
I accept the fact that New York is considered a giant melting pot but I’m firmly convinced it’s more of an alphabet soup that’s boiling over.
Try asking a Qatari immigrant for directions to Grand Central…you’d be better off eating noodles with your fingers. Or trying to figure out what a Colombian was talking about while installing a futon or a Cuban fixing a faucet. It’s worse than the United Nations and you don’t even have translators.
I’ve met a variety of people, speaking a babel of languages. Like the elderly Chinese gentleman who runs an Internet café, or the Sri Lankan Tamilian at a pizza takeout, or even your average Sikh cabbie. Communicating in English seems to be the problem.
I’m willing to stake a small wager (small, since I lost all my money betting on India winning the World Cup), that the number of fluent Anglophones per square kilometer in South Delhi is higher than the corresponding number for Manhattan. I may be wrong, but after spending time listening to a Korean grocer trying to explain where I could find a can of Mountain Dew, I don’t really think I am.
When my wife picked up a cellphone here, the accompanying manual omitted one minor detail. The instructions were kindly provided in French, German, Italian, some other indecipherable European languages (perhaps pidgin Serbo-Croat too?), but there wasn’t a line of English to be found.
Of course, given the multicultural nature of New York City, Spanish is an official language. But it sounds like Greek to me. And Greek, most times, sounds like…well…Greek, as well. Fortunately, I haven’t met anyone who speaks French yet. If there are Francophones around, they’re probably hiding under a rock in Central Park,; hiding from rock-wielding Francophobes. Absolutely. If French Fries have been renamed Freedom Fries (despite the French protesting their association with that culinary monstrosity), anyone remotely Gallic would possibly receive the French kiss of death around these parts. Probably much worse than speaking Arabic with guttural Iraqi intonation.
I really don’t want to get ghettoized but I’m developing an inclination towards spending time with Indians here. No, I’m not getting homesick, or just generally sick, I just feel that they’re the only ones who actually speak English.
I should add a caveat here: It’s probably more of an issue when you do find a Noo Yawker who speaks, or purports to speak, English. I rarely understand a word of what they say. They rarely understand a word I speak. We give up on oral communication and get down to dumb charades.
I seriously believe that business-minded Indians should explore new avenues of mining the gold that the streets of Manhattan are allegedly paved with (to go off at a tangent, even the manhole covers here are “Made in India”). Give up on Silicon Valley, running your Potels and Dunkin’ Donuts and gas stations, and start a chain of English language tutorial bureaux. I’m sure Rapidex would make a killing with its English Speaking Course. Note to Rapidex: Don’t use Kapil Dev for your advertising, you’ll find baseballers who speak worse English.
As for me, I won’t give up; I’ll keep looking for signs of an English-speaking populace in the other boroughs.

(Note: This column has been written in English, even if you don’t accept that claim. Excuse the lousy grammar and syntax, blame it on NYC)