Are You All Right?

            After spending about three months in Australia and after the ATM encounter in Sydney, I thought I had learnt enough Australian and hence went about doing whatever I wanted to do with the required (sometimes more than required – as this incident would show) degree of confidence.

            So one weekend, we decided to do some shadow shopping (as in shadow boxing where you hit at the shadow and pretend that you are hitting someone) as we didn’t have any money to do real shopping. We got into a large garments retail store and started investigating the goods on display – the investigating was related more to its price than its size or quality. So we would stop by each display hanger, hold some part of the garment with one hand while the other looked for the price tag buried somewhere under its layers. Keerti was also doing the same thing but more delicately while I was too conspicuous. After sometime, my peaceful act was disturbed by an unfamiliar voice which suddenly materialized too close to me – “Sir, ah you a’right?” (“Sir, are you all right?” – in English)

I looked at the source of the voice which happened to be a rather tall (definitely more than me) and good looking girl. But since she had disturbed me in my peaceful and harmless act, I replied with and authoritative irritation – “Yes, I am perfectly all right. Is there some problem?”

She smiled (somehow, people always smiled there) and said, “No sir, I wanted to know if you need a help.”

Since I definitely did not need her help in my clandestine act, I replied in the negative, and thanked her for her concern. She went away to some other part of the store.

It was much later that I learnt that “are you all right” is the Aussie equivalent of “may I help you”. So much for my becoming an expert in Aussie English !