Are you from India Vienna
Han main Hindi hi janta hoon, angrezi tho bus pet palne ke liye seekhi hai (I know Hindi only, learnt English to make both ends meet), I replied.
'Please pay me just what is there in the bill.'
No please, you have served us delicious dinner, I must pay this. I insisted to tip after having dinner with Vivien, my Viennese friend, at the restaurant near State opera house (Volksoper).
'Nahi, nahi aap isse rakh lijiye, nahi tho mujhko bahut dukh hoga..Aap India India
I saw her moist eyes and heard her quivering voice. I kept the money silently.
I asked Tenzin Choeky, a lady with dark hair, beautiful eyes, English accent and North East Indian features, if she was from India
'Yes, I am from India
Manipur or Assam
'No, I came from Darjeeling
I kept her visiting card in my wallet and got out swiftly.
Vivien said, for only three Euros both of you were arguing for 10 minutes!
I kept mum and barely managed to say, yes…
She wrote the tube number and bus number on a piece of paper for me and we went together till Wahringer Street, Metro station.
It was 11 in the night. We had to go in two different directions.
'There is nothing like a good company...', so said an unknown budding actress, who I befriended the day before in Vienna
Waiting for the last Metro, my eyes were wandering, my heart was longing and I was listening to a voice…. Tibet Tibet Tibet
(In the pic, Tibet Restaurant in Vienna, Austria)
3 comments:
Wow! Arvind! What a piece of memory!I always had admired your writing skills, couldn't read much of your work though (no patience spend hours trying to read hindi, am very slow). This one touched my heart. Meeting a unknown person, somewhere, a very short interaction becoming a beautiful memory, well depicted! Thanks for sharing this in English.
Arvind ji, beautifully written, it was a lovely reading.
@ Roopa, Thank you very much. I am happy to know that you liked it:)
@ Sarweshwar Bhai, English is not my first language but I tried to put it in English as some friends were insisting ...Thank you very much for appreciation...:)
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