You Should to Be: Drinking Chai with Deepak

We have a new driver. His name is Deepa…or so I thought for the first 5 days. One day he points to a sign that reads “Deepak” and says “See? That is my small name.” He explains and slowly annunciates the two parts of his name, “Dee-pak, Dee-pak is a boy name and Deepa is a girl name.” I nod and resolve to never say his name again.

Deepak is totally different than Avtar, who begins to resemble a robot in my recollection. Avtar would drive for hours without a break, we never saw him eat or drink, and he hardly talked. Deepak never drives more than two hours before he will look in the rear view mirror at me and chirp, “You are needing chai,” endearingly pinning his chai habit on me. We will pull over at a dhaba, an Indian snack bar characteristic of the Punjabi state, and he will order us three chais. Then we will sit--for an hour or two--along the dirty dusty road while Deepak talks…and talks and talks.

Deepak is 30 years old and not married. He tells us that girlfriends “are too much trouble” and then says something about a “cage” before laughing heartily at this notion. He is jocular by nature--bordering on silly. He is always teasing me--and I begin to feel as if I am traveling with an annoying little brother. Deepak especially relishes my attempts at the Hindi language. “Where should we eat?” he will call from the front seat. “Dhaba or tourist restaurant?” Pierce and I exchange glances and reach a silent agreement, “Da-bah” I say. This response is met with a laugh and Deepak says in his most pedagogical voice, “No, no, not Da-bah, Da-ha-ba.”

Ever the good student, Pierce makes a glinting display of his ability to say “Da-ha-ba” as he receives an accepting nod from Deepak. “He talk, now you, go again,” Deepak says, encouraging me. When I try--and fail--again, Pierce offers, “You have to aspirate it more.” I aspirate it as much as possible, but--apparently--still fail, so I give up and enjoy Deepak’s laughter. We play this dhaba game for the next several days and Deepak’s enjoyment never seems to dim.

Pierce and I agree. For the first day or two, we had no idea what Deepak was talking about most of the time (we estimate that he was nonsensical about 80% of the time at first). Slowly, like a small child who parents come to understand, we begin to make sense of his phrasing. Deepak appears to know about 10 different English phrases and he uses these phrases for myriad meanings. Here’s a list of some Deepak-isms:

“You should to be” = “you ought to,” “ it’s important”
“Take a the time pass’ = “spending time”
“50-50” = meaning something between the two extremes of “definitely no” and “probably yes”
“Same, same” = “it’s all the same idea”
“That is true” = inserted into sentences randomly
“Mainly” = this word was tacked on to almost every sentence and, thus, the meaning was completely muddied, but it was probably used to add emphasis to any idea
“Indian way” = this was said whenever he was trying to fix something that was broken (i.e. when he dismantled our cell phone in hopes of better reception and when he used a car key to pop out a jammed audio cassette)
“Psychological effects” = ??? we never figured this phrase out. Upon learning what I do, he continually asked for me to write down some “psychological effects.”

When we leave for Thailand, I receive one last call at the airport from Deepak. “Hello,” I say and a giddy Deepak giggles out “hello?…da-ha-ba!” I play the dhaba game one last time and bid Deepak goodbye before passing the phone to Pierce. It’s the perfect wacky ending to our days in India.

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Part of trip: The Big Trip

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