Child-minded

 This is the story of a woman who takes a leap of faith and decides to move to a completely unknown city far away from her comfort zone. This is my story. I have recently moved to a city in a French-speaking region of Canada. I should also mention I do not speak French. Yet. ( Editor's Note: This particular piece of information is needed to comprehend the incident the author is about to share with you. Now, you are all buckled up. ;) 

I arrived in the city and could not read a thing. Could not read the signboards. Didn't know how to pronounce where I lived. Didn't know how to carry on a conversation after saying Bonjour. I am learning but I still am not quite there yet. Suddenly, I find myself in a world where I can't do one thing that comes naturally to me. I can not read. Is it difficult? Yes. Is it exhilarating? YES. Have I learnt a thing or two from this exciting struggle? YES ( Wish there was a way to write a YES more capital than the previous one.)  

I took a taxi while coming home from work with Yassi, a francophone colleague of mine. Naturally, she did all the talking with the taxi driver dropping us. Usually, we get dropped off at a common pick-up spot but considering the beautiful yet cold rainy weather, the driver offered to drop us at our homes. Since my home is nearer, I was the first to be dropped. 

It seemed as if Yassi and the driver were having a nice conversation about the city. Since the Duolingo owl has constantly and dedicatedly bullied me into learning French every day, I finally started to pick up on the context of the conversation. Not gonna lie, it gave me a sense of pride. Also, a hope that I can do it. I can learn French. I am a genius! ( I didn't have to google the spelling of the word genius after writing it wrong for the fifth time).  During all this mental struggle to decipher the conversation, I catch the car taking a left turn. Ah! There it is, my apartment building. For some reason, the taxi driver didn't know the exact building and had stopped two buildings before my home. I heard, "Où, Madam?" And Yassi turned to me looking for an answer to Où. Now, I know Où means where. During this one second, my train of thought went through all the mental notes I had made on how to converse in a language I didn't know. And like a child not knowing how to speak, I looked for words in my brain to tell him where I lived. To my surprise,  I found myself pointing towards the red shed at the door of my building, all wide-eyed saying, "Rouge! Rouge!" ( How do you say shed in French???!!)  The taxi driver was more proud of me for my efforts than myself. Before I left, I had already googled how to say " You are very kind. Thank you" in French. It is sad how the words didn't come out as beautiful as they sounded in my brain.

I got out of the taxi smiling and opened the door. I couldn't help but think, this must be how a child feels when they try to communicate with us grown-ups. This also must be how a mother feels when she finally understands what her precious little being has been blabbering for what seemed like hours.

Words. Sometimes one word is enough to say it all.

                                                                                            -Anshu Rajput