It has come to my attention that the kids who I’m working with/see everyday at work probably think I’m some sort of strange but nice American alcoholic.
How in the world did this happen?
Through a small but quite funny cultural mis-translation. These moments of misunderstanding seem to be the recurring motif of this trip to
The water bottle I brought with me is made of red plastic. It has the Walgreens logo in the front. For those of you from places without Walgreens, it’s a drugstore like CVS or Boots. A simple squeezy top water bottle that I drink from so that I don’t die from dehydration or get diarrhea from drinking local water.
So when I’d drink from it at work, the kids keep asking…is that red-water?
At first I’d just laugh and say nope, the water is normal, it’s the bottle that’s red.
Then, I realized that laal-jal, or red-water, is actually the Bengali name for moonshine.
The whole time, the kids thought that I carried around a bottle so I could booze it up throughout the day.
I hope they believed me when I said it was normal water.
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