The photocopy-shop aunty "became her teacher without knowing it".

When Selvi came from Madurai to study in Delhi, she spoke Tamil and good English, but almost no Hindi. In the first week, she ordered tea and got coffee, asked for the library and was sent to the canteen, and once nodded "yes" to a question she had not understood at all, and found she had agreed to join the dance club.

The worst part was not the mistakes. It was the moment, in every conversation, when people switched to English for her, slowly and kindly, and she felt like a guest who would never become a member of the family.

So she made a plan. Every morning on the metro she learnt five Hindi words from her phone, and every afternoon she used all five, even if the sentences came out wrong. The aunty who ran the photocopy shop became her teacher without knowing it. Selvi asked her the price of everything, and the aunty corrected her grammar while she counted the change.

By November she could argue with an auto driver. By January she understood the jokes in the hostel common room, though she still did not find all of them funny.

At the end of the year the dance club held its show, and Selvi danced in it, badly, to a Hindi song. When she came off the stage, a girl from her class said something very fast in Hindi. Selvi understood every word, and answered in Hindi too, and neither of them switched to English.