Myth 3: Languages known: English, Hindi, Bengali, C and VB (very basic)

I was happening to watch a Debate on a TV show few days back. It was something related to “Language being a Socio-Political device instigating Division”. So, there were self proclaimed theatre legends (folks who mess up in movies), religious activists (people whose main occupation round the year is to keep a tab on which leader or celebrity sparked a controversial statement and then issue a fatwa on him) etc. each having something or the other to deliver as a Final Verdict on how really Language is creating a rift in the “Unity in Diversity” motto of India. Now, to the mango people like me… I just don’t have the brains to understand some of the theories they were putting (neither do I wish to understand). So, in this blog, I will just write about how and why I have been tortured and confused throughout my childhood (the buck hasn’t stopped, though) with the dilemma of “Why So many Languages?”

Phase 1: Pre-school days: The innocent days of learning your mother tongue – Bangla in my case (am sure this “mother tongue” term originated coz I hardly see Baba speaking when maa n baba have an argument) was perhaps the best days of my life. By birth I am a Bong (I wonder if this term – Bong has really something to do with the Bengali’s affinity to the real stuff ‘Bong’ – u know the one which makes u go high n all), and my early childhood was spent mostly with Marwari and Gujarati kids of my neighborhood. And yes, my baba used to play Boney M and Abba on the gramophone. Thus, I was confused with the Multi Language system long before I even realized what ‘confused’ meant. And yes, Being an Indian and more because am a Bong, I had the privilege of having 1 Bhalo naam (Good name, School name, Official name – wateva) and a series of very embarrassing, hard hitting Daak naams (Gyara – for instance if u r short, Bhombol/Gablu/Golu if ur just a bit on the wrong side of the BMI Scale)

Phase 2: Early School days: Introducing “The English”. The baap of all languages finally arrived on my plate. Am glad that I was admitted to an Eng Med Co Ed School (happier on the Co Ed part of it) and soon fell in love with Radiant Readers. Couple it with Bengali Sohoj Path, Kisoloy etc, plusthere was Hindi...partly coz of the cute Marwari classmate I had a crush on… and largely due to the influence of Bollywood which made my Hindi Base quite sturdy. Long before I had held my First Hindi Textbook, I could already read and understand whole words like “Pyaar”, “Dil”, “Pyaasi Jawani” etc courtesy the Posters. So, at the age of 6, I was doing a threesome with languages.

Phase 3: Middle School days: Things in English moved to frightening stuffs like “Present perfect continuous tense” (I still don’t know what the hell was that – but it surely made me continuously tense), On top of that I had an obese English Ma’am screaming her lungs out “Wren and Martin is your Bible.” And that’s not all – In came, SaratChandra and BankimChandra with their shares of “Duradoyoshchokro nibhosso Tonni, TamaalTaaji Bonoraaji Neela.” kind of Bengali. I loved Hindi back then because it was still in its puberty with “Akbar Birbal” and “Chuha Billi” kind of stories. And those were the days in which I realized the advantage of the 3-tier Linguistic architecture … yes, u get to know so many interesting synonyms for different Human anatomies in various languages. (I can think of around 10 for the posterior one… :))

Phase 4: Senior School/College days: Bengali and English had wrecked havoc by then. Mr. Shakespeare had already suffocated us with his extra dose of “Thou art my friend… “And Bengali did little help either. The only easy stuff, Hindi had already made a quiet exit before the Climax (Board exams). So if you thought 3 languages were more than enough to possibly flunk you, you missed a thing buddies. What about Logo (I still could not figure out wtf did the shore turtle wanted?), Basic, Java, C and its ++ brothers? So again, you needed to work harder on learning another couple of languages to work on a machine which is supposed to make your work easier (Bingo! I framed an oxymoronic sentence)

Phase 5: Settled out of Kolkata: So now, if you are lucky enough to survive all these years of this linguistic torture, you might as well land up with a job somewhere in India. Now that you are ecstatic about the fact that you are earning (and gulping down beer alternate days) and it’s finally the end of all the learning, hold on. If you are in Hyderabad, u better learn some Telugu, coz that would help you understand the lyrics of the songs to which the Busty babes on Sun TV and Maa TV seductively lip-sync to (Just to get a better feel of the things, u know ). If you are in Pune, be sure to scream “Mee Marathi Maanoos aahe, Jai Shivaji” in case Raj Thackerey’s men chose to f*** with u. You have a scope of learning 1600+ recognized Indian Languages in this fashion. Also, you’ll need to grasp languages like JAVA, VB, COBOL, PERL etc, if, unluckily, god forbid, you are an IT guy. Hold on, that’s not all... Your client could be a Mr. Woo/Mr. Gonzales, and your Manager will superbly convince you on learning Woo’s mother tongue now, as it would supposedly help you out a lot once you get an onsite opportunity (But he won’t remember he said anything remotely close to that when you tell him that you have successfully completed the Japanese Certification, is a different story). That’s not enough; If u luckily have an English Client, u should well be able to differentiate between UK/US English…Coz if u innocently say that ”I bought pencil and rubbers for the NGO children”, your US Client will surely mistake u for a pervert; Coz rubber is the term they refer to the thing which is used to prevent having children in the first place.

So what is the significance of this many languages in my existence of being a humble Bong, or let’s say an Indian? Well, the fact is we adapt to everything very naturally. We just cannot be some Mr. James who from his childhood speaks only in English, listens only to English music, abuses only with words starting with F and even makes love only in English. It won’t be much of a fun thing to do, will it? I know my Bengali is of such a degraded quality that Tagore would have smacked me hard on my a** if he could have. My Hindi is still fighting between “aaj baarish hoga?” or “aaj baarish hogi?” My friends say that I have a near perfect strike rate of using the wrong gender every time I speak. My English, ohh… u know by now if you are following my blogs, I don’t need to explain…Marathi and Telugu are something I understand only if there are about 3-4 key words in English punched with them in a sentence. And programming languages? Ask the Computer teacher of my school about me, and it will still send shivers down his spine about the technique I used to design and call functions. But still, somehow I am, like millions surviving, and managing pretty well. Coz I believe that somehow I am better off than a Prime minister of some country who has to carry an interpreter the moment he crosses his borders. We are not very good with any 1 language, but we kickass with a dozen of them. We mis-spell, stammer, and wrongly construct sentences. So what if we see Menu cards with Items like “Masala Cock/Pepsi… Rs.20”, Or maybe a Highway Liquor shop sporting in giant fonts “Child Bear”… (Google it if u don believe me) We adjust and uncannily manage. That’s the best thing about us. And I don’t give a rat’s a** to people who think Language is a dividing force…

Throw me what u got man, am ready for more…! Am kinda Freudian… the more the merrier!