My footprints in India (5)

Ashok is an outreach worker. He joined Jyoti Sangh HIV intervention programme last year after getting his MPhil in Sociology in Gujarat University. Every morning (Mon to Fri) he went to the “field” in New Ahmedabad to distribute condoms to CSW working in beauty parlours and brothels etc.

He is a very nice guy. He accompanied me a lot during my two weeks’ stay in Ahmedabad. Driving me around the city on his motorbike, he took me to cyber cafe, book shops and restaurants etc and acted as my interpreter in each of these scenarios.

His English is not very good, because he has been educated in Gujarati all his life. And my Hindi is very bad either. So we have to communicate in simple English. The only people whom I met in Ahmedabad, who can speak fluent English are the professors and medical doctors. Even the social workers (with an MPhil already) find it a bit hard to communicate effectively with me in English. This reminds me of the situation of many post-graduate students I met in Zhejiang University last year….pretty much the same in terms of oral English fluency.

Actually the Indian intelligentsia are generally better English speakers than their mainland Chinese counterparts as they use it more often. Perhaps people in Ahmedabad are a bit below average in terms of English fluency as one of my Indian friends from New Delhi commented. (To be continued)

Written on 27^th July, 2005.

Go back to Table of Contents

Figure 1: Ashok in front of a big supermarket in New Ahmedabad.

圖一：Ashok在新阿姆達巴得一間超級市場前拍的照

雪泥鴻爪在天竺　（五）

Ashok是一位外展社工。他去年在古吉拉特大學社會學系碩士畢業後加入Jyoti Sangh愛滋病干預計劃。每星期一到五早上，他都會上“工場／田野”(field)──新阿姆達巴得的美容院與妓院去派發避孕套給性工作者。

他很友善，在我留在阿姆達巴得的兩星期中，常常開摩托車陪伴我去這去那：網巴，書店，餐廳……還當我的翻譯呢。

他的英語不大好，因他一生都是用古吉拉特語(Gujarati)來上課。而我的印地語(Hindi)又太差。因此我們只能以簡單的英語來溝通。在阿姆達巴得我所碰到的人當中，只有大學教授和醫生是能操流利英語的，連持有碩士學歷的社工也覺得與我以英語有效溝通有點困難。這讓我想起去年我在浙江大學碰到的很多研究生……他們的英語口語水平差不多。

其實一般來說，印度的知識份子比中國大陸的說英語說得好，畢竟他們用得多嘛。可能正如我一位來自新德里的印度朋友說，阿姆達巴得人的英語水平低於印度人的平均水平。　（待續）

回到目錄