Language
Language, culture and politics
During one of my philosophical musings earlier in the day, I wondered how important language was to our lives. From language, my thoughts drifted to the anti-Hindi agitation of the 1960s in Tamil Nadu. And from there, it turned inevitably to the massive north-south divide that still exists in India. I had blogged once earlier on how difficult it was to find a south-Indian recipe on the web. I had raved and ranted about how India was automatically equated with the North and with Paneer Butter Masala and Tandoori Roti. Today’s post is, in a certain way, a continuation of the previous. People’s association of India with Delhi and its surroundings makes me uncomfortable. It makes me wonder why exactly the South is so conspicuously absent in popular memory. While I have nothing against the North or Delhi, it makes me upset, sometimes angry that people wonder if I speak Hindi the minute they meet me. I do, but that’s not the point. The point is that I don’t have to speak Hindi because I was born and raised in Chennai. There is no fair reason for me to learn the language as I get by perfectly well in Chennai with Tamil and English. This said, I would like to issue a disclaimer. I know Hindi, I can speak it fairly well, and simply use English words in place of Hindi ones if I am stuck. Therefore, any possible accusations of Hindi-phobia are entirely unfounded.
A friend of mine told me about a friend of hers, who is coming to France from Greece. This friend had a tough time figuring out the meanings of road signs in Athens because all of them were in Greek. Random thought: Maybe this is what people mean when they say “this is all greek to me!” Anyway, that made me think about the situation back home. As far as I have seen, sign boards are largely bilingual in Chennai. I cannot say the same about Bangalore or Bombay. I remember trying to recollect my Hindi numerals, rather desperately might I add, in Bombay because someone told me to take bus number 63 and I could not figure out how the hell the numerals 6 and 3 are written!
Anyway, this is fast becoming a pointless rant because I have been on this post for so long that I forgot what exactly I wanted to say. Not to mention that I am being extremely random today. Maybe it is a product of the euphoria produced because I am going back home!!
Get it right! Indian is a nationality…
A couple of days ago, I came across a facebook group telling people to get an atlas if they can’t recognise country names. And, I remembered my first experiences in France. The first time I told someone outside of Sciences Po that I was from India was at the residence where I live. This guy insisted on starting a conversation with me when I was doing my laundry. Wanting to be polite, I replied to his question on my nationality by saying I was Indian. And voila! He says, “Ah! Tu es indienne? Donc, tu parles indien?” To translate, asked me if I spoke Indian. It made me want to turn around and tell him to be a little more precise. Which one of the 21 official languages and more than 500 (I may be wrong here) unofficial ones is Indian? I refrained from unleashing my sarcasm on the unsuspecting character and decided to be polite. I explained that there were more languages in India than in the whole of Europe put together. Which one did he mean? To that he replies, with a tone of great sincerety, “But, all of them must be comprehensible to everyone right?”
Uh oh…problem here. Tell me, is French comprehensible to someone who speaks only Romanian? Or English to someone who speaks Norwegian exclusively? Then how the hell does he expect a native Bengali to understand Tamil? I dismissed the incident as a freak accident of fate. But no, I had overestimated the intelligence of some people in this place. Since then, I have met people who have asked me the same dumb questions. “Is there internet in India? Do you speak English? Do you have electricity?” Haven’t they heard of India ever? Haven’t they followed the furore that outsourcing created? Have they not ever heard of Amartya Sen? Do you have any idea how many Indians work at Microsoft? Do they even know that when they call Dell to troubleshoot your computer, they are probably talking to an Indian named Maragathavalli with the nickame Maggie, or one named Sambasivam a.k.a Sam?
For the last time guys, I am not from the tip of the world. I come from a country that is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. It is many times bigger than France or Germany and is home to one-sixth of humanity. And also for the last time, a language called Indian does not exist. It is Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Bengali, Gujarati or even Tulu, but not Indian. Get it right! Indian is a nationality, not a language!
Words, comforting in their familiarity
As I sit in my chair before the computer, sipping a cup of hot tea, many thoughts and ideas attack me from all sides. Half of them concern my virtually non-existent talents in Spanish, and the other half concern the comfort a familiar voice can offer. The language barrier is something that has always concerned and baffled me. I never had to face it when I arrived in Paris, seeing as I spoke French perfectly well. But, it hit me on the face when my Senegalese neighbour started speaking in rapid-fire Senegalese. This was quickly followed by an overheard conversation between two of my Chinese neighbours. And suddenly, I felt surrounded. I almost wished that I could speak in Tamil or Hindi with someone who would understand. I understand that feeling claustrophobic about incomprehensible languages is slightly crazy, but it made me realise the importance of the spoken word. I almost took my language skills for granted. I automatically assumed that I could manage because I spoke 5 languages and understood two others rather well. Apparently, that is not enough. Probably because 3 of the 5 languages are Indian languages. Words that I can understand are almost comforting in their familiarity. A simple ‘thank you’ can communicate so much to one who understands the meaning.
But then, I am in a rather crazy, philosophical mood, pondering the meaning of love and life, of words and meanings, of music and melody. They are all indications that there is still sense in living this life we so desperately seek to control. But, I suppose the very same words, that held so much meaning, can become meaningless and irrelevant if overused. I learnt this the hard way. But this said, I will always love words. After all, there is a reason for doing a masters in literature…
The Sound of Music and the Power of Language
I was listening to A R Rahman’s song “New York Nagaram Urangum Neram” from Sillunu Oru Kaadal this afternoon. Seeing as I was slightly free and wanted to relax, this seemed a good choice. Now, this is not the first time I am hearing this song, nor is it the first time I actually paid attention to the lyrics. But, today was different. Feeling slightly depressed as I was, thanks to the rain in Paris, the lyrics got an entirely new feel. I had never before noticed the astounding complexity of sounds in the song. Rahman is known for using many layers of sound to create his truly unique music, but this one takes the cake. The song, about a young husband spending time away from his wife in faraway New York, touched a chord. The sheer pain of separation and the desire to get back as soon as possible came through every word of the song. How did I miss this one? Given that it is the ringtone of my phone, I get to hear it quite often. But it never touched my heart the way it did today.
That set me thinking. How many songs have I heard that makes me want to cry, laugh, feel nostalgic or express some emotion in some way? Well, the answer is clear. Not too many. The ones that do are few and far between. One song that never fails to elicit some kind of reaction from me is the song Mettuppodu from the movie Duet. It really is beautiful. I reacted with confusion when I first heard it. I was quite young, still a teen. I had no idea language could mean so much to someone. And I frankly could not understand why someone would want to sing about the Tamil language of all things. Today, I have come a long way. And I do agree that the language has a beauty that none other can really match. I am not an expert in Tamil. Indeed, my first attempt at reading anything more than road signs in the language came when I was 17. But, as I discovered the world of Tamil literature, I realised that it is a language that was more beautiful than Milton’s English or Racine’s French. However, my primary languages remain English and French. I would not want to torture my poor readers by writing anything in Tamil. Today, I hear the same song, and I feel a sense of nostalgia. I wish I could abandon clumsy attempts at explaining Indian cuisine in French and English and just revert to Tamil. With the nostalgia comes a sense of shame. Shame that I know English, French or even Tamil better than my own mother tongue, Kannada. Hell, I can even speak, read and write Hindi. But I cannot distinguish between Kannada and Telugu. Some Kannadiga I am!
Anyway, with that observation, I go back to listening to music. And yes, much as many find it difficult to believe, I prefer Indian music any day to anything western. Maybe it is just me, but I need to feel the words, understand them with my heart and not my brain, and above all, relate to it. Indian music lets me do that. Pop, rock or jazz do not. It is as simple as that. I prefer the beautiful and melodious voice of Nithyashree Mahadevan supported by only a tambura, or the Instrumental theme music of the film Bombay to Britney Spears singing in an accent that is as alien to me as Swedish is to the average Indian. Music, poetry, literature and language can all heal the soul and make one happy.
On a totally unrelated note, I just wish people would stop associating Tamil with the LTTE. I speak Tamil, live in Tamil Nadu, and love the sound of the language. It doesn’t make me a terrorist!! Argh! I just wish they would stop.
Confessions of an obsessed anglophile
These are, as the title suggests, the confessions of an obsessed freak. I am totally and completely fed up of people using the words then and than interchangeably. I am also fed up of people forgetting that good is an adjective, and well is an adverb. One cannot do good in studies. He/she can only do well. Is it really that difficult to remember some basic rules of English grammar? I am a stickler for good grammar. So, shoot me! The French would not take kindly to someone speaking their language badly. They will and do correct glaring mistakes in language. While I acknowledge that writing in e-mail lingo is both quicker and easier, there must be some ground rules on writing in serious columns and blogs. I agree that your blog is your own personal way of saying what you feel like. But, that doesn’t mean you render yourself totally incomprehensible to the unsuspecting reader who stumbles on your home page.
I was looking for some maps on the Indian Ocean region a few days ago and I stumbled on a blog that supplied great maps, but was written in atrociously ungrammatical English. I was curious enough to look up the name and location of the owner of the site on www.dnsstuff.com. And voila! I find that the site is owned by someone in California, United States. My reasoning that it must be a work of a person who was not a native speaker went flying out of the window. This business makes me think that George Bernard Shaw was right when he lamented the state of the English language in the play Pygmalion. Why can’t people just take the effort to learn the language they use every day?