Deutsche language

It was 1991 I think. I was keen to reduce some of my excess weight. As luck would have it, my office timing was 8 am to 4.30 pm. I went and played Badminton in the office grounds. It was fun to play the game with my colleagues. But fate had some other things in store!

I was transferred to Heavy Motors Engineering department. I was to design heavy motors. From large motors to Heavy motors was in a way improvement!

Then came the other interesting thing as far as the job is concerned and not so happy news as far as my badminton is concerned.  There were hush hush information that I will be part of the team which is going to Germany’s Dusseldorf to visit and get trained in AEG factory on the German motor designs. So, the basic thing was to learn the German language. The classes were at 6 pm. So, I had to leave the office by 4.30 pm to go to Goethe Institute from my office at Yeshwanthpur.

Badminton was tossed out of my routine and I had to embrace learning of Deutsche, I mean German language.

I started going to the classes on the scooter with my colleague Saravana Kumar.

We had a frequency match. So it was fun even going to the classes.

On the first day, to our dismay, we found that our classmates were very young! A good number of 10^th standard girls!

We had a Frau. Prabha Prabhu. The first day was totally chaotic! She came and started talking to us in Greek and Latin (I mean German! For us even German was a foreign language then!).

Ich heissa Prabha Prabhu. Wie heisen sie? She asked. After a little confusion, we felt that we need to reply in the same way. Ich heissa Yathiraj. Wie heisen sie?

That is the way to learn a new language. We have to think in the same language. Denken sie im Deutsche, nicht denken sie in English.

Think in German, don’t think in English was the first lesson we had.

Then came Frau Maya Krishnamurthy. She was half Indian and half German. We enjoyed her classes. I even now remember when one girl (Leena I think) asked Frau K, Ma’am, what is for I love you in German?

I was her neighbour. I uttered softly ich lieba dich. She didn’t feel that I could know that. Again she asked Frau K. she pointed her finger towards me!

I was referring to a Hindi song’s line… !

I was quite loud in the class. Teacher used to break a piece from her chalk and used to throw at me!

I passed out Grundstuffe Eins (Ground stuff one), in other words, LKG in German. Do you know? Kinder Garten what we use for KG classes means Children’s garden?

Frau K was so surprised that I passed. She was sure I won’t be able to speak in German! But I did quite well!!

Then I joined G2. We had a teacher Mr. Argekar. He had commented on the first day of the class that the only voice he did not hear was mine from G1 class! What he meant was I was quite a boisterous person.

I am a Leo and a loud one at that!

As time has passed, as I have grown old, I have toned down my voice, my quick wit and glib tongue.

After all, the mantel has to be passed on to a younger person.

Right?

Auf wieder sehen!