When the inner door to the lift in my parents’ apartment building in Bengaluru is opened, a polite female voice issues bilingual instructions in a continuous loop: “ Please close the door. Kripaya darwaza bandh kijiye. ” Now, I find it extremely annoying to be lectured to by a lift, so I avoid it altogether. If I must use it, I hurry to pull the door shut before the dulcet tones have completed the message in English.
In other such old elevators across Bengaluru, the (same?) voice urges in Kannada, “ Dayamadi gate mucci. ” But the Kannada message ends on a note of joyous wonderment, like saying “peekaboo” to a baby: Mu-cci! MU-cci! MU-CCI! I feel quite braced and ready for anything when I’ve pulled the metal doors shut.
When I wondered why our lift was so tediously sarkari in ordering us about in English and Hindi, I was told it was installed under the watchful eye (rather, ear) of a North Indian flat-owner, who has long since moved out.
The linguistic range of Indian lifts is a somewhat new preoccupation. This summer, the appearance of Hindi on Metro signboards (along with English and Kannada) in Bengaluru was taken as an insult by certain groups. In the time-honoured tradition of Indians who have had their sentiments hurt, they proceeded to damage public property by defacing the offending Hindi signage.
This got me thinking about the presence of Hindi in my life and more broadly, its presence in South India.
Hindi has always come a distant third to English and Tamil in my family. English is my first language, the language my mother taught me. I was certainly exposed to Tamil as a child, but it remains there, in that space of childhood. Tamil is the language of affection, of childish things, of nostalgia. Hindi had a negligible presence, but I did grow up listening to Mukesh’s Laut ke aa just as much as I did Abba’s Money money money or M.S. Subbulakshmi’s kurai ondrum illai. Of these, it was only the lyrics to Abba that I could actually understand.
Hindi became a greater presence (by a few hours a week) in school in Chennai. My parents had decided I should take Hindi (over Tamil) as my second language and Sanskrit as the third because these would be available anywhere in the country should we move.
It was not a language I particularly enjoyed learning. But we had an excellent teacher who taught us Hindi in a charming Malayalam accent. When she retired, a younger woman with the “right” accent took her place. She tried something novel on her first day; she asked us why we were studying Hindi. We were given two choices. Was it because a) it was our national language or b) our parents had forced us? It was quite clear what the correct answer was. We had to stand one by one to answer. Being tall, I was always seated in the last row, so I had time to consider. This new teacher was an unknown quantity; the wrong answer might make my life in Hindi class difficult. But when it was my turn, I chose option b, not because we’d been taught “ asato ma sat gamaya”, etc., but because “it’s our national language ma’am” was too nauseatingly pious. I was quite emphatically (and smugly) not pious (and I continue to be smug about my instincts). After this unusual exercise we were treated to a lecture on the importance of Hindi, presumably directed at those of us wanting in national feeling.
Imagine my outrage when I found out many years later that Hindi was not India’s national language. That India had no national language at all.
Too many Indians are ignorant of this. Take the gym I once belonged to in Bengaluru (it had a lift that admonished delightfully in Kannada). Its membership was diverse, but united in the quest to sweat. Tempers did flare on occasion and when they did, but the sore point was more often than not the music.
Either English or Hindi, the music was equally atrocious. No one should have to witness aunties un(self)consciously hum the words “ my hump my hump my hump my lovely lady lumps, ” as they power-walk on a treadmill. The alternative was falling off the treadmill in a coma as Shreya Ghoshal inhaled our collective “ saaaaans ”. I once stopped midway through a run to Google the lyrics to a Bombay Vikings number that announced, “ Baby, no one so sacksy, in the whole guh-lacksy. ” I had heard right.
One morning a Kannada track came on. This was a blessing; I could concentrate without being distracted by the lyrics. Not for long, though. In strolled a member who wrinkled up her nose and whined, “ What kind of music is this yaaa? Play something good, no? ” This prompted the member who had requested the track to protest. Suddenly, we were not just gym members anymore. We were North Indians and South Indians. “ But I don’t understand the words, it’s not fun .” “ But I don’t understand Hindi music and that’s what they play all the time .” Back and forth it went until the inevitable compromise of an English track was struck.
Later, I chatted to one of the trainers about this seemingly insoluble conflict. I knew he was Kannadiga and I was curious about what he thought. I told him I thought it rather strange that people should make a fuss about Kannada music in Bangalore. Without skipping a beat he replied he didn’t think people should make a fuss about Hindi music either. It was our national language.
I told him India had no national language. I’m not sure he believed me.
After all, when we can have a national microbe (to be fair, I’m not sure how many Indians are aware of this either) why on earth would we not have a national language? I certainly don’t remember any History lessons about the movement for linguistic states, let alone the anti-Hindi agitations in Tamil Nadu. I learned about those from my father. As a boy, he’d witnessed the protests in 1965.
Shocked by the violence against student demonstrators, he’d joined a march against the imposition of Hindi, shouting “Hindi Down Down”. It was a grim moment, but he finds humour in those memories too. How short-lived his moment of triumph at tearing down the ‘ Dak ghar’ sign in the local post-office when the postmaster chased him away with threats of telling his grandfather. What magnificent irony that the protestors he had marched with gathered outside his house, throwing stones and demanding that the concrete sign with the name of the house etched in Nagari script be removed or else. How brazen of my great-grandfather to argue that it was not offending Hindi but innocuous Sanskrit. It had taken several men several hours to finally tear down the concrete slab. I still don’t know if they replaced it with one in Tamil. Or was the house left nameless?
When he was telling me these stories, it never occurred to me to ask why he and my mother had decided I should study Hindi in school let alone much later what he thought of my decision to study Hindi literature in graduate school. There was no need.
On any given day, my father might speak up to four languages. English and Tamil with his family, Hindi with the watchman and Kannada when complaining to some local authority. Tamil is his first language, but he uses English more. He has never learned either Hindi or Kannada, but he speaks both with total confidence. Recently the watchman brought along a friend to take his place while he went on his annual vacation and I overheard the conversation between my father and the two young men (from Himachal Pradesh). Looking at the temp, my father laughed incredulously and said, “ paryeh to bahut cchota dikha (sic) raha hai ”. The verbal form he used was incorrect, but everyone laughed in agreement (the replacement looked all of twelve). I’m not in a position to judge his Kannada, but he speaks it with the same confidence and, I imagine, the same atrocious grammar.
I, on the other hand, speak Hindi well. Sure, I slip up on occasion, but I don’t necessarily “sound South Indian”, as I have been told many times (ostensibly as a compliment). While I was doing my research in Varanasi, it entertained me no end to watch people trying to reconcile my last name with my accent (or lack thereof), confusion writ large on their faces, and curiosity (how?) and embarrassment (how to ask?). An Indian academic, whom I’d met on a number of occasions, couldn’t believe it when I told her I was South Indian. I thought she knew (I’m sure I’d given her my card) but I realised she didn’t when she launched into the familiar moan about South Indians refusing to learn Hindi. I suppose she just hadn’t noticed my last name.
Such encounters are often amusing. Mostly tedious. And sometimes unpleasant.
I was circulating at a reception during a conference in Shimla on Early Modern Hindi literature. Mingling with the attendees from American, European, and Indian Universities were also some Indian journalists who were covering the conference. I walked up to a group where I’d spotted a familiar face and introduced myself, using my full name as I usually did while introducing myself to strangers. An Indian journalist looked at me disbelievingly and said, “ What kind of name is that? ”
“ What kind of music is that? ” Only, worse.
I’d like to say I had a quick and witty comeback, but it was an American colleague who said what I wish I had, “It’s a lovely South Indian name.”
In my experience, Americans make more of an effort to say my name correctly than Indians. Unfamiliarity doesn’t seem to worry them as much. Why should certain parts of the country be so foreign that people need Hindi signboards to make them feel they’re in India? I don’t know how many people actually find the Hindi signs useful while taking the metro in Bangalore, but it seems to me that those who want it there are not concerned with its usefulness. It doesn’t matter what the sign in Hindi says or even whether people read it; the fact that it’s there at all is the message. A creeping colonisation.
The Hindi one encounters in public contexts belongs to the School of Pompous and Ponderous. Its opacity renders it useless in terms of actually conveying practical information. As I waited at the airport in Bengaluru for a flight to Delhi recently, the boarding announcement was made in Hindi. A disembodied voice urged, “ kripaya pravesh dwar ki or prasthan karen .” What? If the boarding gate were bedecked with jasmine and marigold and flanked by sari-clad women sprinkling rose water maybe it would be a pravesh dwar . Instead, a bored-looking security guard and a bored-looking gate agent waited to scan us on our way. And since no one knew what we were being asked to do, prasthan-ing was farthest from what happened. To prasthan would mean being orderly, stately and dignified. Instead, when the gate agent beckoned the crowd to start boarding, what happened was a galibili (it’s Kannada, look it up). Why not simply say, “ kripaya boarding gate ki or badhen .”
When I returned from Delhi, there were no announcements, not in Hindi and not in English. The Indira Gandhi International airport is apparently a “silent airport”. You’ve got to look at screens that inform you (in English, as far as I could tell) when and where to board.
The smarter gyms in Bangalore are also silent; members listen to music through their headphones. Elevators in newer buildings have automatic doors; they don’t admonish you in multiple tongues. Perhaps this is the answer to our linguistic chaos. Silence.
Pity. I’d miss being told off in Kannada.
(The author is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and teaches Hindi Literature. Email: vasudha.paramasivan@gmail.com )
