I am silence

I don’t know hindi!

I have tried to learn it the way people try to learn swimming—getting in, panicking, swallowing water, climbing out coughing. I tried again, and again. Each time I didn’t just fail. I failed loudly, publicly, with the kind of failure that leaves a mark on your face even after you’ve wiped it off.

The humiliations of not knowing hindi are not small. At the time they felt like stones. Now, when I remember them, they look like props from an old play—so absurd I almost laugh.

Almost.

---

It happened once in Bengaluru, inside my office campus. There was a bank branch tucked neatly inside the compound, small, neat and clean,

I went to change the address on my account. Behind the counter sat a young woman. On her desk was a small board that read:

**khayaal aapka**

I had just returned from on-site we call, a country abroad where I’d picked up this new habit—calling people by their names. Not “sir,” not “madam.” Names felt clean. Equal. Western. Like a new shirt.

So I walked up, read the board, and said brightly, without a second thought:

“Hello, Khayaal. How are you?”

She stared at me. Then she laughed. She laughed and laughed. Not a polite laugh, not a small smile. A full-bodied laugh that shook her shoulders. People turned. Time stretched.

I stood there with my document folder in my hand, feeling suddenly like a child who has said something wrong in class and doesn’t know what.

When I finally escaped to my seat, I told my teammate what happened. My teammate’s laughter was worse—more merciless, more knowing.

“That isn’t her name,” she said, wiping her eyes. “It’s a slogan. Bank’s advertisement slogan in Hindi.”

A slogan.

I had greeted advertising like a person. I had tried to shake hands with a wall.

---

Years later, in another country, I went to a bar with a friend. The air was thick with music and the smell of fried food and spilled beer—the usual warmth of a place that makes people careless.

We stood in line. Two men stood in front of us. Indians. They spoke in hindi. Every now and then I felt their glances flick toward us, quick and sharp, like someone checking a mirror.

Then they stepped out of the line, like they’d forgotten something. One of them turned and said something to me in hindi—loudly, because the music was loud, because he could, because he assumed I belonged to his language without asking.

That assumption has its own weight. It doesn’t look like cruelty at first. It looks like convenience. But it annoyed me.

I had been drinking. Three Asahis had made me braver than I deserved to be. All the fights I picked up being younger self has kicked in. I felt fire rush in me.

And I exploded.

I shouted at him in tamil—filthy, ugly words I won’t dress up here—words meant to cut, meant to shame. Words that made me feel powerful for exactly two seconds.

The other man with him understood tamil.

He didn’t shout back. He didn’t threaten. He said, calmly, almost gently:

“Hello. We’re leaving the line. He was just telling you to go ahead. That’s all. Why are you talking so rudely?”

That calmness humiliated me more than any insult could have.

Even now, ten years later, I remember my own voice in that bar and feel my face burn again. Not because I didn’t know hindi. Because I used that gap as an excuse to become something smaller.

---

And then—because life has its own sense of irony—I got a job in Noida.

I couldn’t refuse it. It was good work. The domain I wanted, the technology I liked. The company gave me a guest house for six months. Every two months they’d even pay for a flight so I could go to my home town and return. It was a deal that sounded generous.

I landed in Delhi with my bags and my unease. A driver picked me up and dropped me at the guest house. It was a compound with two houses, each with three bedrooms, furnished like a temporary dream. There was a watchman. Two cooks. A driver. A manager.

For two months, no one else stayed there but me. The halls were quiet. The rooms held the day’s footsteps like they were saving them for later.

One of the cooks was Balram—my age, from Bihar. He didn’t know English. I didn’t know hindi. Between us there was mostly pointing, nodding, and the strange patience of two people trying not to embarrass each other. We spoke language of silence and we understood each other well.

Every night he came to ask what I wanted the next day. Dal. Rice. Roti. Paneer. Those were easy—words I had learned the way you learn survival phrases.

Then one day I wanted okra.

I didn’t know the Hindi word. I didn’t know any word that could travel from my mouth to his understanding. So I found a scrap of paper and drew okra—long, ridged, green in my mind though the ink was black. I held it up like proof.

Balram stared at the drawing. Then he looked at me. And in his eyes I saw it—the recognition of my struggle, the way a man recognizes another man carrying some heavy silence.

He smiled and said, “Sir… **bhindi theek hai.**”

For a second I misunderstood. Bhindi sounded like bindi in my ear and my brain turned stupid with panic—*Why is he telling me to put a dot on my forehead?*

The next day he served me perfect okra.

Balram was brilliant in the kitchen. His food didn’t feel “made.” It felt *arrived*. I started calling him Nalan in my head—the mythical cook—because there was a grace to his hands, a certainty to taste.

But there was one thing that troubled me.

After meals, he would not let me wash my plate.

In my childhood, I had been taught this as a rule of dignity: you do not let someone else wash your used plate. Your saliva. Your leftovers. Your intimacy.

When I reached for the plate, Balram stopped me. He spoke quickly in hindi, then tried again with gestures. Finally he managed to make it clear: if I washed my own plate, the manager would be angry. Balram’s job would be at risk.

I went to the manager. I explained.

The manager shrugged. “We’re paying him, aren’t we? Let him do it.”

That sentence landed in me like a slap. So the next day I bought paper plates and ate on them. A small rebellion. A small attempt to keep my own rules alive.

Balram said nothing. He didn’t thank me. He didn’t argue. He simply absorbed it, the way people learn to absorb things when they have no space to protest.

Sometimes I worked late. Without asking, he brought me tea. A cup placed quietly near my laptop, steam rising, his presence lingering for half a second before he left. Most of our friendship was built from these small things—care without conversation.

Then a colleague arrived.

On the second day, he asked for papaya in the morning. Balram forgot.

It should have ended with a laugh, with a “Next time.” Instead it became a storm.

My colleague shouted at Balram—angry, sharp, personal words that filled the kitchen like smoke. I tried to intervene. He told me not to. Balram, cornered, said something back in hindi. I didn’t understand it. I only saw his face—how a man looks when he has been pushed beyond politeness.

My colleague lunged to hit him.

I blocked him. My heart was pounding. The air felt dangerous.

And then my colleague turned to me and said it—casually, confidently—about caste. His caste. Balram’s caste. After all, some people were treated like objects you could rank and crush.

I had heard of caste violence. I had read about it. But that day I saw it up close: not as history, not as theory—as something alive. As a blade made of a single word, sharpened in the mouth, aimed at another human being’s throat.

That night the guest house manager questioned us. What had Balram said? I couldn’t answer. Not because I didn’t care—because I didn’t know hindi. The language failed me at the worst moment, the moment when clarity mattered.

I told the manager what my colleague had said about caste.

The manager listened. His face stayed blank. Then he walked away.

The next day Balram came to my room and, through gestures, told me he was going on leave.

Days became weeks. Work swallowed me. I forgot him more than I meant to. Sometimes forgetting feels like relief. Sometimes it feels like betrayal. I couldn’t tell which it was.

Then one day Balram returned and started cooking again—quietly, efficiently—but something had changed. The warmth was gone. There was distance now, like a wall built overnight.

Maybe someone had instructed him. Maybe he had built it himself for safety. Either way, it stood.

I did not break it. I told myself I wasn’t a revolutionary. I told myself I needed peace more than justice. I told myself many things.

---

A week later there was a dinner at the guest house. Clients had flown in from abroad. My presence was expected. Balram would cook.

He asked what I wanted. I asked for chicken pepper fry.

That night, a production issue hit—P1, the kind of problem that bleeds money and makes every minute feel expensive. We worked and worked until the fix held. When I finally returned to the guest house, it was three in the morning. My shirt smelled like stress. My eyes felt bruised.

I had been in my room barely ten minutes when Balram knocked and entered with a plate.

Hot food.

Chicken pepper fry.

Steam rose from it like something alive. Like he had been waiting.

He said something in hindi and left.

I didn’t understand a single word. Not one. Not even enough to repeat it later.

But I understood him. 

I understood what it meant to remember. To keep food warm for someone who might not come back on time. To offer care without needing to be thanked. To speak in a language I didn’t know—and still be heard. To convey brotherhood with silence.

They don’t need words.

They arrive anyway.