If you know me, you know that regardless of how much I complain, when I agree to do something, I end up doing it no matter what. Well, that´s no different with this Hindi presentation.
I left school yesterday pretty sure that I wouldn´t be able to pull this off. After all, I had to find a text, make sure it was about water, have Mom translate it for me, write out my own phonetic version and then learn how to pronounce it correctly AND prepare myself to read this in front of people. Now unlike just about anyone else on the planet, public speaking is something I love, but publicly presenting something in Hindi is also something I have never done.
Anyways, before leaving, I searched through the Rig Veda, the Ramayna, the Upanishads, and Rabindranath Tagore´s poetry on the lookout for something about water. I did find something from the Rig Veda, but it was in English, not the original Sanskrit, which completely didn´t help. So I left, wondering if this task would prove to be too much for me.
But, as usual, God just wouldn´t have that. As I was walking towards the Metro, I saw a man standing on the side of the street reading - take a wild guess - a book of Rabindranath Tagore´s poetry. I get on the Metro, and who sits down next to me but four Indian women speaking a mix of English, Hindi, and another language I didn´t recognize. I seriously contemplated asking them if they knew of any Hindi passages that discussed water before deciding that I didn´t want them to think I was crazy. Then I remembered that earlier this afternoon as I was leaving my house to head back to school, what came on TV but a group of Indian people dancing to a song from "Rang de Basanti" and showing the program´s host how to wear a sari.
Whether I liked it or not, it looked like the whole world was in line for me to do this presentation.
After having no luck at all finding a book of Tagore´s poetry at the bookstore, I put my final hopes in calling Mom and seeing if she´d had any luck. If not, I would just have to tell the university thanks, but no thanks.
Well, I call Mom only to find out that a family friend wrote a FOUR-PAGE essay in pure Hindi (the kind no one in India but the academics use today) about the importance of water. Needless to say I was shocked. There was no way I could say no to this presentation now. Mom also went online and found a poem written in Hindi about the importance of conserving water. She read it slowly to me, and I re-wrote it in the Roman alphabet; afterwards she and Papa translated it for me into English. I recited it a few times back to them to perfect my pronounciation, and that was that.
Now if you´ll remember from yesterday´s entry, I was told I had to find a passage by today and then turn in some kind of essay on Thursday. Turns out the Spanish word for essay (ensayo) is also the word for rehearsal. For the first time ever, it turns out I´ve got less work than I thought!
En fin, tomorrow is the rehearsal and Monday is the presentation. Two good friends, Claudia and Jenna, are performing a skit (in Spanish I think), and Laura is reading a passage in Italian. I´m excited to find out who else is performing and am honestly still chuckling at the thought of how I got enveloped in this whole business. Stay tuned to see how it ends!
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