In Hindi, to tell someone it was nice to meet them
You say
Aap se milkar kushi hui
“Happiness happened after meeting you”
In Hindi, the numbers do not follow a standardised pattern
You cannot be sure of the number for 34
just because you took 30 and added 4.
You can have a guess, but some quirk of pronunciation
will trip up your tongue, leave you
nearly right
You need to know each number by heart
So if you know any Hindi-speaking mathematicians
they are the smartest person you know
You should look at them from bended knee
Open mouthed in awe
That they should be born that way
Statisticians say
the chances of you, being born you
Exactly the way you are
With your beard and your wheezing chest
And those little lines around kind eyes
Is 40 trillion to one
The same chances as me, being born me
Exactly the way I am
With my brown eyes and my curly toe
And my bum that keeps dancing
Long after the rest of me has stopped.
You will not tell me the Hindi
For 40 trillion to one
I suspect it is because you do not know.
I do not know the odds
Of you and I
Each long-shot chances
meeting and loving
How could I be sure
we would make what we do
Just because I had me and added you?
There are no numbers for us my love
Any more than there are numbers
For the stars in an infinite universe
But in our hand-to-mouth language of
Entwined fingers and tongues
We make words of each other
We are both fluent
And yet utterly unable to translate
We could try
But what we’d say would trip up the soul, be
nearly right.
Like saying
“You with after meeting happiness happened”
Or “Nice to meet you” ,
When what you really meant was
Aap se Milkar Kushi hui
So instead,
We keep dancing
Long after the rest of them have stopped
Try and know each other by heart
And love that we will always be
Nearly right
on bended knee
Open mouthed in awe
Saying only
Aap se milkar kushi hui
Happiness happened after meeting you
And knowing we can count on that.
Hindi Mathematics
Rebecca Cooney 
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