Amarjit Sidhu: Living in many countries as a photojournalist, speaking the language of the world

Ever since I moved out of United States people ask me what languages do I speak? My answer has always been Punjabi, Hindi, Bengali, Urdu and a bit of Nepali.

Outside of India and the United States I have lived in Spain for a year and less than six months in South Africa and almost eight years in Romania. In Romania most of the population is multilingual. Romanians speak French, German or Italian or Spanish. So when people in Europe asked me about my language skills although they said wow at the number of languages I could speak, I had very stereotype answer because the languages I know were not necessarily much of a help if I’d wanted to maneuver around a new place.

That was the case, until I moved to Dubai. First time I came here was when Internet City had just come to life and I took a picture of the developer and went on to take pictures of the model of Palm Island and its developer with his Red Ferrari over looking the steam of “what will be the Palm Island.”

I had come to Dubai for The Earth Times at the time, and the theme of our special issue was “The Greening of UAE.”

While I was here, I called a friend in NYC and told her this was the first time in my life I could use my language skills outside of India because the driver I had at the time spoke Urdu.

This time almost a decade after returning to Dubai, I wrote on Facebook that for the first time in my life I could use my language skills not only to get around but a work with my colleagues to get my points across. Al Arabiya is truly multicultural.

In Romania during the Communist Era, every one grew up watching Bollywood movies. So after getting into a cab first thing they would ask was where I was from. If I said from India (mostly I avoided saying I was from the US because they would take me for the tour of the city calculating in dollar earnings), they would start singing “Mera joota hai Japani” (“My shoes are from Japan”) and ask if I knew of Raj Kapoor, the late Indian superstar whose movies still are screened around the world.

Here in Dubai, when I take a cab to work in the morning, I hear Bollywood songs on the radio; if I start to speak in Hindi, Urdu or sometimes in Bengali the driver invariably has a look that says, “And how do you know my language?”

(Amarjit Sidhu, photo editor of Al Arabiya English, is also a licensed pilot, and a poet. His photography has been exhibited in many parts of the world. Mr. Sidhu can be reached at: [email protected])