On Chontay
At the Brahma Kumaris retreat, everyone greets each other with
"Om Shanti."
It roughly means: I am a being of light, and so are you, and I recognise we're made of the same thing. It's a genuinely lovely way to say hello to a stranger.
My mum didn't quite catch it.
What she heard, and confidently repeated to everyone she met all weekend, was
"on chontay."
It turns out this was her ears reaching for something familiar and landing on Enchanté — the French for "nice to meet you." Not a translation of Om Shanti. Not even the right language for the room she was standing in. Just the nearest thing her brain had to hand.
She said it to staff. She said it to fellow guests. She said it, I imagine, with total confidence, the way you say something you've heard other people say and assume you've got right.
Nobody corrected her.
An entire weekend of "on chontay," greeted every time with a warm smile and an "Om Shanti" back, and not one person mentioned it.
I only caught it myself by accident, overhearing her mid-greeting. When I told her, she was mortified. Genuinely mortified — replaying the whole weekend in her head, every polite exchange now recast as a small act of collective mercy from people too kind to say anything.
We'd spent an entire afternoon in total silence together that weekend, and I'd been proud of how well I managed it — surprising, for someone who talks as much as I do. My mum, meanwhile, apparently couldn't manage silence for more than a few hours before she needed to be greeting complete strangers with a phrase that doesn't exist in any language.
I still don't know how nobody told her. But there's something quite perfect about it, in hindsight. She'd landed, entirely by accident, on a phrase that meant something close to the right thing anyway — delighted to meet you, said in the wrong language, to a room full of strangers who understood her perfectly regardless.
