foot in mouth incident I!

There is this new Caucasian face in the bus whom we completely ignore and go about making jokes like our usual selves – we’re this raucous gang of three, four miscreants who huddle in the last two seats and make conversation on god-knows-what-not all the way home. This new face did punctuate our conversation with his questions on the commute but otherwise kept mostly to his self. He seemed surprisingly knowledgeable about the city and roads around Bhat Bhateni.

Ever heard familiar Nepalese words in a foreign tongue? Though it sounds like a convoluted effort, they etch out right and then you say to yourself, “O, so he’s been here a while!”

As passengers thinned in the bus and I neared the end of my commute, I tried to strike up a conversation with this new face. We were the only ones left in the bus and it would be rude not to engage him in conversation. After all he was new to the workforce!

I get to the point where I ask him about his earlier work and I end up asking him if he is Irish. I surmised so from the welcome note forwarded by his department; as prior to joining our joint, his assignment was with an Irish aid agency and he also had impeccable English.

It struck gold – he indicated that he was.

I blurted out, “But, you don’t have an accent!”

I think he was a bit taken aback by the statement. A very long pause later he explained that he had a very faint one and it must be because he’s been away more often than in his country.

via caricatures-ireland.com

How ignorant a remark was that? I gather its the equivalent to us being questioned if we’ve climbed Everest or how we were able to speak English all together being Nepalese and all.

I guess I blurted out the remark as this was my first encounter with an Irish man, the closest ever only being the numerous times I have watched Snatch (maybe a dozen times or more) or Brad Pitt’s rendition of the IRA freedom fighter in “The Devil’s own“.

The bottom line is – “I have always been enamoured by the Irish accent and all things Irish.”

After Frank Mccourt, with Angela’s ashes and Tis, the Irish had taken its toll.

Now, I dread meeting a homosexual who has come out of the closet. Not because I dread them, but because I dread blurting out something equally daft or moronic and making a complete idiot out of myself.

NB: Image courtesy: Caricatures-ireland.com