This Article First Appeared in The Scroll On Jan 02, 2024
In a land of immigrants, the vigorous use of hand-gestures is a great way to communicate with a person whose language you don’t speak. Which is how I get by when I bump into my friend Monica’s mother on the road outside my suburban home in a sleepy town in the San Francisco Bay Area. Aunty has, on several occasions, tried to teach me a smattering of Telugu, as she wants very much to communicate with me, but I’ve been a bit of a disappointment on that front. Of course, our inability to speak the same language has never come in the way of my enjoying piping hot dosakaya pappu at her home.