Two Great Actors

Everybody knows, that knowing foreign languages and especially English, helps us to communicate with the representatives of other peoples, but it turned out, that the power of this general truth   fades in case of really great actors.Years ago, I saw a show on TV, during which Sergey Israyelyan told about an incident, the witness of which he was in the 1970s.And now I will retell it recollecting what I heard that day.

Sergey Israyelyan and Mher Mkrtchyan were in a hotel hall in Moscow and they walked to the lift door. Just at that moment Mher Mkrtchyan noticed the great Indian actor Raj Kapoor, who was surrounded by journalists taking an interview from him. Mher Mkrtchyan turned to Sergey Israyelyan and said: ''look, Raj Kapoor is over there''. At that time they had already got to the lift door and wanted to press the button and just at that moment something unbelievable happened. Suddenly Raj Kapoor left the group of journalists and quickly approached our heroes who were looking at him amazingly. Raj Kapoor embraced Mher Mkrtchyan warmly saying “Hello’’. A few seconds passed, he stepped back and looked at Mher with a wide smile as if to be sure that he was not mistaken and again hugged him. It seemed that two close friends hadn’t met each other for a long time. Then they began to greet each other with words: Raj Kapoor was speaking English, and Mher Mkrtchyan was speaking Armenian. Raj Kapoor didn’t want to leave Mher and the latter didn’t want to part with Raj Kapoor. And they three went to Raj Kapoor’s hotel room and talked till morning: Mher in Armenian and Raj Kapoor in Indian, because he understood that Mher couldn’t speak English and decided to speak in his mother tongue like Mher. They didn’t even look at Sergey Israyelyan. Sergey Israyelyan had to look at them and wonder how much they wanted to tell each other, and how well Mher Mkrtchyan understood Indian and Raj Kapoor-Armenian. Two great actors had met.

The Armenian text is by Yura Ganjalyan

The translation into English has been done by the pupils of Grade 11: Aida Grigoryan, Laura Enoqyan, Haik Ghazaryan, Venera Arakelyan, Larisa Simonyan and Gayane Gharakhanyan