We Indians take a lot of pride in our grammatical approach to English. So much so that we would readily abandon the crudest nuances of what would seem comprehensible and use tedium as an alternate of literacy. The lessons of dictum later, let’s get down to the assimilation of vernaculars. We do have a version of English called “Hinglish”. However we do forget that India speaks a million languages for it’s oh so modest population of a billion hungry people.
The other day I was off to the only temple I go to. Something about the atmosphere appeals to me. There is a weird custom there. Every visitor is welcomed into the temple by being hit in the head with two canes by scantily clad Brahmins. And if you are unfortunate enough to understand their lingo then you will also notice a perverted view to the world of religion. The language is unnervingly akin to the one used by the slum dwelling Indian counterparts. One would expect the pillars of religion to be a little bit; civilized should I say! Their religious semantics apart, their usage of language was quite a revelation for me.
On the occasion I was sporting a goatee, which my friends had assured me; looked prosaically draconian. However I was convinced that the original without the patchwork was no better and hence the abominable styling. The Brahmin in the meantime quipped “Jagannath ki chadi, I like your dadhee”.
For those familiar with the English, Hindi and Oriya ; you should have no trouble deciphering the quip. Loosely translated it was “The cane of Jagannath, I like your beard”. Now that would be a veritable nightmare in case you looked for a critical appreciation of the same. It rhymed however. No doubt the intent of humour was to loosen my wallet a wee bit and the niggardly one that I am, I wished him well. The thing that caught my acoustically trained ear lobe was the strange palette on offer. India it seems has learnt to grow itself a language that seems strangely scavengic (coined one there !) ! We have developed a sense of language like sponges. Absorbing and evolving. After all religion and its mascot the relevant deity are on sale to the highest bidder. And it makes sense that the bidder would definitely not be speaking the vernacular.
However in a few cases we do use the language of the world in its entirety. On this trip to Mumbai, as I and my friend were trying to find our way we came across a food joint. As usual it sold Indian and Chinese and fast food. We were more interested in finding a decent chai shop when I happened to glance at what was written underneath the menu.
“Entry from backside only”!
0 comments:
Post a Comment