Angrez chale gaye...

It is hard to believe that I no longer think in my mother tongue. It’s been a long time since I’ve thought in Hindi. My thoughts are always in English. I sometimes keep looking for English analogues of Hindi words. It’s that ingrained now. Angrez chale gaye, angrezi chod gaye. Saale. Although I’m comfortable speaking three languages, since I am living in the USA , English dominates the day’s vocals. But what is amazing is that when I speak to friends from home or Indians here, I switch effortlessly and inadvertently between Hindi, English and Telugu. Our brain’s are marvelous polyglots. What do I call it? Hintel (like the super-processor Intel) or Tinglish (ouch! That combo hurt…O.U days!) or shinglish?( Yeah, that really hurt…the ears). Never mind. That’s digressing too much.

I am simply amazed at how much the language has pervaded our lives. We talk and think in English, all the literature we read is in English ( Oh come on guys, how many have you actually read Malayalam [ a palindrome,incidentally] or Urdu or whateverurMTis novels or newspapers etc? ) , puzzles we solve are in English ( yeah, not math puzzles, but we still use the 1s 2s etc and not numbers in our vernacular) , blogs we read are in English etc. We even pun in English.

I personally think I articulate better in English because my vocabulary of any other language is not as extensive. Although that is hard for firangs to believe. I have been complemented by people on my good English speaking skills. Hah!. I am surprised to see people (whose native language is English) surprised when foreigners speak and understand the language better than them. If there is anything that is shocking is the way the firings murder Indian names. Poor Dixits. I guess I would be shocked too if I heard George Bush beat Vaajpaaye at a Hindi elocution contest but that’s not going to happen. Not in eternity. But since English is a universal language (the Brits left no stone unturned, you see) why is it surprising that we speak the language better than most other people? It has all got to do with adapting to the new and alien. No wonder we are the largest ethnic group of immigrunts! And of course our intellectual superiority (think of Aryabhatta and not Mohammed Bin Tughlaq) helps us. Where we falter is that we get a unique accent in the picture. The other day my friend was talking about watching a Gujrati Rape video in public. I was appalled. He meant a Gujrati RAP song! At the grocery store, the Mallu owner did not understand I wanted honey until I told him HEN-NEY. (No guys, he was not cocky and definitely not a pheno menon) and then Chicago becomes chi (as is chit) cago.

But I guess denizens of vitreous edifices must not hurl petrous projectiles at others. So I will terminate the blog. Fancy English! Supererogatory, lagniappe. I know.

( Aashcharyajanak baat yeh hain ki hum gaali avashya hindi mein dete hain )