India, Nov. 2 -- I had been away from India for several months. After travelling through Indonesia, I finally landed in Bengaluru. There is always something comforting about coming home after being away for a long time: the familiar language, the familiar faces, the familiar traffic and that familiar Indian gift for communication, where an entire conversation can happen with a movement of the head whose exact meaning remains unavailable to the rest of the world.

I got into a taxi, tired, happy and simply enjoying the feeling of being back. We had hardly travelled any distance when the driver suddenly said, quite matter-of-factly, "Sir, jussht... reshttuuu... one minute." Pure Kanglish. The grammar was Kannada, but the vocabulary, entire...