Yes is No and No is Yes

For me, an Indian citizen, entering Bulgaria must rank as the smoothest border-crossing experience in my travelling life. And it was done without applying for a Bulgarian visa. Bombay, where I live, doesn’t have a Bulgarian consulate. The Bulgarian embassy is in Delhi. The thought of my wife, daughter and me flying to Delhi with our passports and spending days in the embassy waiting for visas was enough of a deterrent to cancel Bulgaria from our summer plans. However, a couple of sufficiently official-looking websites said Indian citizens may be allowed entry into Bulgaria if in possession of a valid Schengen visa. (Bulgaria is not yet in Schengen).

Once we succeeded in acquiring Greek Schengen visas, I had added Bulgaria to our Greece itinerary. The expression “may be allowed entry” is nerve-racking for anyone who has studied law. Will means will, and must means must, but the dishonest ‘may’ includes ‘may not’. When our bus left Thessaloniki, the north of Greece, for Bulgaria, I was a little nervous.

At the border of any European or North American country, Indian citizens are routinely interrogated. What’s the purpose of your visit? How long are you planning to stay? (Show me your return tickets). How much money are you carrying? (Show me your cards and cash). Who are you going to stay with and why? An American immigration officer when questioning my 10-year old daughter had ordered us, her parents, to not say a word. (He wished to trap our daughter into revealing any secret plans we may have had of migrating illegally). An in-depth scrutiny was done by a Vietnamese officer at the San Francisco airport. He asked me to draw a family tree to explain the exact relation with my host; where does she work and for how many years, when was the first time we had met (this cousin and I were born in the same year, so I honestly said I don’t remember the date of our first meeting), when was the last time we had met and why.

*****

We were the only non-Europeans on the Greece-Bulgaria bus. One hour from Thessaloniki, the bus stopped. A giant of a man entered the bus, and took our passports away. (Of course, the other passengers – Greeks or Bulgarians – didn’t need to part with theirs). My rucksack contained a file with our Bulgarian itinerary, insurance, money, credit cards. I waited to be summoned.

Fifteen minutes later, the bus driver came back and handed me the three passports. I checked. Each had two stamps: departure from Greece and arrival in Bulgaria. The bus started. Without moving an inch from our comfortable seats and without saying a word, we had crossed into Bulgaria. Bulgaria was added to my list of favourite countries.

Value for money

Blagoevgrad was our first stop. Browsing its centre for lunch, we were stunned by the prices. Bulgarian Lev is half of Euro. (Greece is possibly the cheapest Euro country, but we still felt the difference).  Bulgarian prices are a delight. Everything is cheap; food, transport and housing.

Trust me, when an Indian says a place is cheap, it’s truly cheap.

In marketing, big corporations call their cheap brands ‘value for money’. “Cheap” suggests low price as well as low quality. Whereas, “value for money” suggests the quality exceeds the price you pay for it. That is the case with Bulgarian food. Great quality at modest prices.

When looking for the address of the farmhouse where we were scheduled to go, I stumbled across a real-estate website. Selling prices in Bulgarian villages are comparable to rents in other European countries. At least four reasons for why housing is so cheap: (a) Bulgaria has one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe. (b) Because of its low wages, no Europeans wish to move here, not even the Greeks. (c) The Cyrillic script is alienating. (d) Being the poorest country of the EU, with lowest average wages, Bulgarians have been moving to richer European countries for work. In the last 25 years, more than 1.5 million Bulgarians have left Bulgaria. That’s a large number for a country with a population of 7 million.

Your surname please

In a Telenor shop, I picked up a prepaid SIM card for 3 Euros. The girl at the counter started filling my details on her computer.

What’s your surname please, she asked.

Abhyankar, I said.

Sorry?

A-B-H-Y-A-N-K-A-R.

“Your spelling it out won’t help. I need to fill the form in Bulgarian.” She smiled.

“Oh”. I took a piece of paper and wrote in cursive handwriting “Абхьянкар”.

Looking thrilled, she began talking in Bulgarian.

“Oh, no, please.” I stopped her. “I don’t know your language, only the script.”

*****

A similar incident happened with Mukul, my brother, when he was living in Frankfurt. He and his friend from Jordan were out for a walk. At a grocery store, Mukul saw a magazine with Sachin Tendulkar on its cover. Sachin Tendulkar was India’s god of cricket. Mukul picked the magazine up, but he couldn’t read it. The script was Islamic.

“Sa-Chi-N Ten-Dul-Kar” (سچن ٹنڈولکر) read Mukul’s friend from Jordan. He began reading the article aloud, his eyes moving from right to left. Mukul watched him, fascinated.

“Mashallah, I can read the whole thing.” The boy from Jordan said. “But I can’t understand a word of what I am reading.”

“That’s amazing.” Mukul said. “I can understand every word you are saying but can’t read it.”

*****

Language and script are very different, though we usually think of them together. Mukul’s friend from Jordan could read Arabic, and as a result Urdu, the language of Pakistan. Indians understand Urdu (though can’t read it), because Hindi and Urdu are in essence the same language divided by two religions and two scripts. Urdu is positioned as Muslim, and Hindi as Hindu.

Religion played a key role in devising scripts. Script is like a code that brings your faith together and keeps other faiths away. Monks had the required education to generate scripts, time at hand to labour over them and religious power to enforce them on the masses. Saint Clement of Ohrid, a Bulgarian monk developed the Cyrillic script for the orthodox religion. (He named it after his Greek teacher saint Cyril). Russia, another Orthodox nation, chose it for its own language. It may sound odd that the Russian language uses the Bulgarian script. One hundred years ago, after the Russian revolution, Lenin and other intellectuals earnestly discussed switching over to the Latin script, so as to merge with the rest of Europe, but didn’t dare do it. Had it adopted Latin script then, Russia’s future might have been radically different. It is likely Russia would have been part of the European Union today.

Script is a strong political tool. Mustafa Kemal Pasha, the Turkish reformer, replaced Arabic script with Latin. After the disintegration of the USSR, countries like Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan dropped the Cyrillic script that reminded them of their Soviet past, and swapped it for Latin. The Bangladeshi loyalty to Bengali was so fierce; it split from Pakistan to avoid the imposition of Urdu and Arabic.

The connection of religions to writing systems is obvious. The Latin alphabet is associated with Christianity, Arabic with Islam, Devanagari and its offshoots with Hinduism, and Chinese script with Buddhism (Sri Lanka a notable exception). Cyrillic script is linked to the Orthodox Christians.

Script is so important for religious identity that Sikhs in India devised Gurumukhi for their bible, Guru Granth Sahib, and subsequent use. Were Sikhs to use Devanagari, Punjabi would have become a mere dialect of Hindi, and Sikhism a minor sect of Hinduism. Gurumukhi elevated the Sikh identity. (In Pakistan, the Punjabi Muslims use Shahmukhi, a script based on Arabic).

The politics of scripts is such that in the ninth century, the clever Hindu Brahmins added a prefix Deva (God) to the Nagari script. A case of classical marketing. Divinity and superiority were added to the script, to the language that adopts the script, and the religion that uses the language.

In smaller towns of China and Japan, restaurant menus exclusively in local scripts make a foreigner feel unwelcome and illiterate. Before you come to Bulgaria, it is helpful if you learn the Cyrillic script.

A single standard script for all languages would immensely benefit the world. Restaurant menus and road signs can be read anywhere. The world will become secular. Rationally, I support this view.

As a language lover, though, I feel aghast at the thought. In our minds, there is an inseparable bond between our language and its alphabet. Using some other script for our language would look like African ballerinas performing Swan Lake. Possible, but weird.

Yes and No

Sorry for digressing with a long discourse on scripts. It’s just that Cyrillic script is among Bulgaria’s identities. It is EU’s only country to use that script. (EU has three official scripts. Bulgaria uses Cyrillic, Greece Greek and the remaining 26 countries use Latin).

Another identity of Bulgaria is yes and no. This week, I was talking to Grigor, the manager of the farm where we are now staying.

I: Grigor, are we going to Yambol today?

Grigor: (Shakes his head from left to right).

I: I thought you were planning to take us there.

G: (Shakes his head more vigorously) da, da. 

I: It’s ok if you can’t. We’ll take the local bus.

G: (Nods up and down) ne, ne.

I: Are you ok with our taking the bus or are you going to drive us to Yambol?

G: (shakes his head, again and again) I will drive you to Yambol.

I: Oh, you could have said it in the beginning. I’m sorry if we are troubling you.

G: (Nods, up-down nods repeatedly): No, no. Not at all.

*****

In Europe and America, you nod your head up-down to say yes. You shake it sideways to say no. Indians when saying ‘yes’ or ‘ok’ move the heads like a doll with a broken neck-spring. But Bulgarians nod up-down to say ‘no’. They shake them left to right, right to left to say ‘yes’. Try saying no while nodding, and yes while shaking your head. I admire Bulgarians for mastering this improbable synchronisation.

When talking to Grigor, I now try to avoid looking at him. It’s unnerving to watch a no-nod and a yes-shake.

Ravi