How do you say Tharangambadi in Danish?

I read in the newspaper from India that I grew up with, The Hindu:

Ten early-Pandya period cave temples will be declared protected monuments this year, and the Danish Fort at Tharangambadi, which was damaged during a recent cyclone, will be repaired and restored, Thangam Thennarasu, Minister for Industries, Tamil Official Language and Tamil Culture and Archaeology, said on Thursday.

That news about the Danish Fort at Tharangambadi reminded me of Kris, Kirsten, and Danish-Americans in Bakersfield.

My first newspaper opinion piece--not any short letter to the editor--was when I was a few months away from wrapping up graduate schooling in Los Angeles, which was my port of entry to life in these United States.  The Hindu and The Los Angeles Times had published letters from me, but this was a full-fledged commentary.

One might expect me to cherish that commentary.  But, the op-ed was, in retrospect, a terrible piece.  If I am a work in progress, one can easily imagine that I and my writing sucked big time three decades ago. 

It was published in the Bakersfield Californian--by then I had transitioned to life in Bakersfield.  Soon, it was a second opinion piece in that same paper.  A day after that second opinion essay, when the phone rang at work, it turned out to be the beginning of a productive association and friendship.

The caller was a professor at the local university.  He was pleased that the opinion author was from India and wanted to contact me right away.  He was also from India, and chose to go with a short version of his multi-syllable Indian name.  At the end of the brief phone conversation, he invited me and my family over to his home for dinner with him and his wife.

I was impressed at two levels.  For one, he tracked down the phone number of the agency where I worked--newspapers always include a note about commentary writers--and called me right away.  More than that, without having ever met me in the real world, he invited us over for dinner.  He was carrying on with the tradition in the old country, where inviting people over for dinner was the way to build a relationship, and which is sorely lacking in this country where people casually say, "let's do coffee sometime."

We had plenty of dinners with Kris and Kirsten.  He was only a few years younger than my father.  Kirsten was from Denmark.  They met when he was a graduate student in Copenhagen.  From there, the couple came to the US, which is where Kris earned his doctorate.

Soon after, Kris invited us to join them at the local Danish association's potluck gathering.  In his uniquely funny manner, Kris added that he was the president of the Danish Association.  Only in America can an Indian be the president of a Danish association!

It was a small gathering.  Most of them were even older than Kris.  They were globally informed, and were familiar with India.  One of them, a very old woman, quizzed me about the Danish connection with India.  Yes, she quizzed me, as if I was a child who had just started going to school.  She asked me if I knew about the Danish colonies in India.  Of course, I knew about Tranquebar--it was the European name for Tharangambadi.  The town is not far from Neyveli, which is the industrial town of my childhood. 

As angry as I have always been about Europeans going to far, far away places to colonize lands and people, I don't hold that against individuals from those countries, unless they make condescending or racist remarks.  The old woman was genuinely interested in India, and I was delighted to engage her.  She was happy that I knew about Tranquebar.  She talked about how in their schooling they had learnt about the Danish East India Company, and the Nicobar Islands.  One of her biggest regrets was not having been to India. 

Had I not come to the US and had instead continued living in India, my life would have been like that of many of my classmates with their comfortably rich lives.  More than those comforts, I would have had pooris and vadais anytime I felt the urge, instead of drooling for them in a remote Oregon.  But, I would never have had interesting and serendipitous encounters with people from different corners of the world, including from a tiny country that is a long, long way from Tharangambadi.