An Indian name for India? You must be joking!

Subroto Bagchi's thought provoking blog http://www.mindtree.com/subrotobagchi/my-mother-is-an-ugly-woman/ got me to put to fruition my long pending penchant for writing a blog. And now that I am on this blogging bandwagon at last, hope I can contribute meaningfully and frequently enough to it, without just spraying 'bites' around.

This is about something that happened more than 5 years ago, but has since left an indelible impression on my mind. It was a cold foggy morning as my flight glided into Frankfurt International airport from Chicago O'Hare. Thanks to some brilliant bungling by airline folks, my food preferences had been messed up and I was reduced to surviving on some lettuces and cucumbers and the like for the last 16 odd hours. So I walked into transit lounge hoping to catch up on some hot black coffee at least, which in better times I'd have given a miss, but not this time, starved and frozen soul that I was. Luckily for me I found better fare than black coffee, my favourite hot chocolate. So sipping on my second hot cup of chocolate I sauntered over to this portly gentleman at the enquiry counter to check when my connecting flight to Bengaluru was due. He was reddish in complexion and rotund, but rather uncharacteristically short for a German. This particular gentleman was rather polite and gave me all the details I asked of him. And then as I was about to move away after thanking him, he posed a question, that I must admit was rather unexpected. "So you come from India, am I right?" . "Yes..." I meandered waiting for what was to follow. "What is the Indian name for India?" he came to the point right away. "Pardon me?... " . My mind, numbed that it was by lettuces and cucumbers, wanted to make sure if I heard it right. "Yeah... Like you call this Germany, but we call it Deutsch-land. So what do you call India?". "Oh that way.., we call it Bhaarat" . "Are you sure?" said he. Now I felt a bit like I was in the hot seat with AB senior's booming baritone teasing me in KBC. " Yes of course " I said now somewhat affirmatively. "But that can't be !" He was now beginning to sound disappointed like I had somehow mysteriously wriggled out of some well laid trap he'd laid out for me. "Why do you say that" said I. "Well there is a colleague of mine who is an Indian and he told me there is no Indian name for India". "Well now the cat is out of the bag! " thought I. I tried convincing him about his misconception but he seemed cocksure. Then digging deep into my coat pockets I pulled out a small blue book, my passport. Laying it down in front of him, I pointed out to him the the words "Bhaarat GaNaraajya" written in Devanaagari above "Republic of India" and read it out to him. He shrugged and moved away. I could almost read his thoughts that said, 'Well, I cant read it anyway, so what's stopping you from saying whatever you want'. I moved away for my third cup of chocolate with a smile.

As I settled down with my cup of chocolate I thought to myself, well it's not this guy's mistake, He obviously trusted his colleague, who was to him the face of India. And you can't fault him if his colleague turned out to be ignorant. Whether he was plain ignorant or was uncomfortable with the name 'Bhaarat', I have no means to know. But the rest of my flight back home, was laced with a tinge of sorrow for the quality of ambassadors that we dish out to the world outside. The least this gentleman could have done was to say that he was not aware of an Indian name for India, rather than emphatically put wrong ideas in people's heads. But then again, I wondered if I was getting unduly worked up about something trivial. But then again, just to put things in perspective, say you heard a kid saying "Well, my friends call me 'Nosey' because of my long nose, but I don't have any other name". Chances are, you'd think this kid was an orphan, and you'd sympathise with him. Are we lost orphans in this civilized world? Or maybe we need to rediscover ourselves ?