Project Prochnost: Week 12

This week was low-key in terms of writing practice, so the cover picture is a repeat. Now that I straightened that out, something interesting happened, you guys! 🙂

For those who may not know, I attempted haiku once before and spectacularly failed at getting the syllables right! This week, therefore, I gave it another shot.

The first line of my haiku went like this – Dew drop on the grass. Next couple of minutes passed and I had it going as – роса о траву, which is (I guess, as Google Translate agreed later) its Russian translation. I knew the words for ‘dew’ and ‘grass’ from my writing practice and I wrote my poem’s first sentence in Russian before I realised it. It doesn’t count much since the poem in question is a haiku and the sentence in question is barely four word long, but it made me happy. I figured that this actually counts as my Russian update, so there!

During my first week learning Russian, I decided to sign my emails for a Russian friend as ‘Love, Neha‘, so I put love in Google Translate. It returned люблю and I had a back-and-forth of four to five emails signed using this, before I figured out (by myself!) that this term is used for romantic interests. Oh, the embarrassment when she said she just found it funny and sweet, so she didn’t correct me!

It reminds me of this one time years back when my best friend had just started learning Hindi and I asked her for the whereabouts of a mutual friend. She wanted to say ‘Her boyfriend picked her up this morning. Will drop her in the evening.‘ but she was into the mode of strictly-speaking-hindi to quicken her learning and she said – ‘उसका आशिक उसको सुबह उठा कर ले गया. शाम को फेंक जाएगा‘! For those who don’t read hindi, this translation refers to the term ‘pick’ and ‘drop’ as an actual picking and dropping, making our mutual friend’s innocent date sound more like a kidnap. God! the fun little quirks of language 😀

P.S. Stay tuned for the aforementioned haiku this Tuesday. пока-пока for now!