One senior coke and a value pack of nuggets

The idyllic country town of Cockeysville, where most of my time in America has been spent, is more a village than a town - of course, from an American perspective. This is a posh town with a lot of residential areas. Terraced houses, children's parks, gymnasiums, swimming pools, and shopping malls dot the tranquil landscape, which is far away from the hustle and bustle of Baltimore downtown. A lion's portion of the town is dedicated for open spaces with roads and walkways that are lined with a variety of magnificent trees, now lush and green in summer.
Flower beds at the centres of open spaces and corners of almost every block are resplendent with roses, tulips, and Black-Eyed Susan, Maryland's state flower. Butterflies and goldfinches hovering over these flower beds is a common scene. Chirping birds of different sizes are whisking around, busy picking their summer foods, making their nests or feeding their chicks.
The fields are impeccably manicured. There are woods and hedges on the edges of the residential plots where one can find some ancient trees whose names only a botanist or a zoologist can correctly identify. Among those the only trees whose names I know are 'weeping willows' and 'maple trees'. I love their characters: the beauty of ground sweeping branches of the weeping willows and the maple tree seeds that spiral and glide to the ground like a helicopter landing, for which they are also called helicopter seeds.
One of the greatest joys I enjoy in Maryland at this time of year is when blossoms scent the air. There is a tangle of fragrances coming from everywhere and suddenly I feel intoxicated when my nose senses the sweet aroma of honeysuckles, all drifting from nearby woods and bushes.
Maryland is far away from my home. I like Maryland, but I am yet to fall in love with this land. The weather is punishing, especially in the winter. As I feel terribly down when the sky here is cast dark with clouds, the mist blurring the visibility and the chilling wind biting my bones, I cry out in desperation to go back home to bask in the warmth of the pleasant winter in my country.
I enjoy seeing the beautiful panoramas in America. I also relish those delicacies in the franchised eateries here. But when my mind wanders back to those 'addas' with my friends where we spent hours together almost every day, taking tea with some 'daalpuris' and debating over the burning issues of the world, as if, top leaders around the world were waiting for the consensus we were about to make at the end of our 'adda', I feel I am a helpless prisoner in the USA.
It's a queer feeling indeed when you enter a culture very different from one to which you have long been accustomed. It's difficult to blend with their culture, especially when you are yet to master their language and accent.
You don't need to speak fluently in English while you are in America. Americans are particularly kind in this regard. They don't easily give up helping you when they sense you are a foreigner or not capable of speaking. You just utter a word or two politely and display, if possible, a bit of sign language by moving your hands and fingers. That's all! Leave the rest with the American guy to take care of.
Once I found a deaf and dumb customer in a McDonald's restaurant in New York ordering his preferred size of drink by regulating the distance between his extended thumb and index finger like a Vernier Caliper: for a medium size drink his two fingers were about two inches apart.
But, what is really strenuous is comprehend what Americans, especially black Americans, prattle with words breathlessly fired out in their tongue-twisting accents - just like, as the Bengali saying goes, "Khoi" (grains of paddy) popping and bursting open noisily whilst being fried.
Accent is not dialect. Dialect is a specific form of language that has its unique words, grammatical structures and phonology. Accent is a variation in pronunciation; it is how we twist our tongue or how and where inside our mouth the tip of our tongue touches while we utter a word in our accustomed tone.
Many a time I found myself dunked in a thick soup when I miscomprehended words in American accent. It took me quite a while to understand what they really meant when they uttered words and phrases like "Ta-may-to", "Hey youz!", "It's bizzah", "Dontcha know?" They sometimes elongate vowels, stretching "you" into "yew", coffee into "cawfee" and shorten consonants like "ax" for ask, bird for 'boid" and "dis and dat" for this and that. I had to prick my ears up and stare at the movement of their lips to understand what they really said or meant to say.
American accent of an old white lady that I couldn't fathom out has left in me an indelible experience I am not going to forget the rest of my life. Never in my life had I to spend so much energy to understand one simple English word the lady uttered. I could easily ask her to repeat the word a bit slowly or spell the word for me. But, I couldn't tell the truth and shame the devil. I didn't want to prove myself to her a stupid guy who could not understand a simple English word.  It happened only a few weeks back at a popular American fast food store called Burger King.
My favourite hangout in the afternoon, if the weather is fine, is the Burger King on Cranbrook Road at Cockeysville, which is a ten-minute walk from our home.
Americans are broad; they don't look at what you drink or eat. Everybody here enjoys liberty and dignity, no matter who you are: a homeless pauper or a wealthy man. Still, lest the salesgirl or the people in the queue should assume I was poor or stingy I used to order for a showy meal like Double Whopper Sandwich along with potato fries and a medium drink every single day, that cost me never less than eight dollar though I was never hungry in the evening. I could easily go for simply a small drink to quench my thirst.
I got puzzled when my Bank Statement said I had spent a big fortune on account of my meals at Burger King. So, I changed my regular evening menu and ended up with a cheaper version of one medium drink and a small pack of French fries. Still the cost was no less than four dollar.
One day I found an old, skinny white lady, a regular visitor to Burger King as I was, carrying on her tray one small drink and four pieces of nuggets after paying in cash (I could well see from a distance) one dollar and a few cents. That inspired me to follow her suit; so I ordered the same. But my bill, to my surprise, was three dollar five cents. I was perplexed! I couldn't figure out how there could be two different prices for the same meal for two different persons!
A COKE AND A VALUE PACK OF NUGGETS FOR $ 1.78 FOR SENIORS; FOR OTHERS $ 3.05: Desperate to save money and forgetting any feeling of shame or guilt, one day I approached the lady who sat by my side: "Good evening!" She reciprocated my greeting with a broad smile replying "How are you today?" "I am fine." I intoned, "You know, madam, I feel great with a small drink and four pieces of nuggets. And that is your meal that I'm following".  "Yaw! No point grabbing tons of junks when you can make it with morsels and a tiny drink," she replied. "But, madam, how come I pay more than you for the same meal?" I chipped in. "Why don't you order for 'surrey' drunk and 'valaay' pack?" Huh! I couldn't follow what she said in her minced words. I thought she meant a drink smaller than the small drink.
The next afternoon, as I approached the cashier I ordered for my usual meal, but this time I used additionally a sign language (that I learnt from a deaf and dumb customer of Mc Donald's at New York), extending my thumb and index finger one inch apart, trying to mean a tiny drink smaller than the standard small. But, no change of my fate! My bill was three dollar and five cents, as usual.
Determined to dig out the mystery, one day I stood just next to the old lady in the queue to see and hear in my own eyes and ears how and what she actually did order. When it was my turn to place order I told the cashier pointing to the lady who got her order placed just before me: "Give me just what the lady got". The cashier looked up at my head full of salt and pepper hairs and rang up my bill for one dollar seventy-eight cents. Wow! I felt victorious. It was a difference of one dollar twenty-seven cents!
My eyes however got rounder as I saw in the receipt nothing near to "surrey drunk and valaay pack" the lanky lady once sounded.  It was actually "One senior coke and a value pack of nuggets". How on earth could I ever imagine that a Coke could be senior too, even if the lady in her clearest possible voice would have pronounced loudly "A Senior Coke"?
This is another beauty of America! Here seniors are respected. Seniors get discounts even in some restaurants, not only in trains and buses! There is another beauty in the advertising jingles of American products. Here every customer is a Very Important Person (VIP). They could have termed my stingy order for four nuggets as 'a mini pack'. But, they value you; so they call it 'a value pack' - the way old days' 'Third Class' they nowadays call 'Economy Class'.
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