Although I had watched The King’s Speech ,the inaugural scene of Colin Firth stepping towards a majestic crowd at Wembley deserved a ‘second time’.
Standing in my way of seeing two minutess of impeccable shooting was a lady- turning or just about turned 35 craving for a packet of Nachos and an incredibly chilled can of Pepsi(Diet). The boy selling the junk item was not comfortable with the ‘smooth as the flow of Royal Blue in a Parker’ english the lady was jabbering. “No Pepsi …thandi nahi hai Madam “ was all he could muster, but the lady ,unperturbed with his impediment carried his silken Anglicized touch…”Hey hang on..pass on a packet of cheesed popcorn(watch out for that delicate yet all important touch of grammer – Cheese-ed)
The battle of orient v/s the Occident carried on until after 20 minutes I got to utter “2 nachos kay packet Bhayiaa” which could easily have been under 10 minutes.
English ,is often regarded as a gift given to us by the Britishers. A domain .most of the elite Indians are revered to be expert at. It is a language and probably one of its kind which I guess has been a status symbol for the past 100 years, and looking at the respect that the vendor had for that Madame , I guess it will be there for another 100 years.
But along with that respect I was able to catch a glimpse of fear that gripped the guy instantaneously, an inferiority complex that had caught hold of him and this effect is also one of its kind that only English can produce in a country that has a growth rate of 7-8 % amidst dubious recession.
64 years after independence ,many of Gandiji’s teachings are considered to be deprecated. One of these is his theory where he told that an Indian should respect ,know and speak Hindi. If I try my hand at it ,then I would say that Ganndhi wanted a sort of an inner revolution to take place in India, a revolt Which would lead the nation to have pride in itself, to have a satisfaction attained with a glass of Rooh-Afza rather than a diet-Coke, and most of all which would have avoided a scar India is now facing – CULTURAL IMBALANCE.
An imbalance that I experience while going to the office in the envious skyscrapers of Powai via the equally piteous slums of Mulund(both of them in Mumbai) . An inequality that I observe between IT guys like me and the unemployed- forced to be militants Kashmiris.
Language is a fluid that always has to be refined if we want to polish our civilization with smooth development .Language is the simplest definition of a culture which in turn is the granite of the building blocks of any nation. And we all are well aware that this stone is somehow, somewhere crumbling. A scorn at Munshi Premchand ‘s classics for a craze at GRE Barron’s is an ultimate proof of that.
China, Russia , certainly larger in area than ours reached the status of ‘developed ‘ in a comparatively shorter period of time because they had there thoughts to be told and applied in the language they revered and loved and most importantly spoken with pride by all of them.
India today , on the other hand is in a state of confusion..not able to decide what is apt for it- ‘Allah tero naam ‘ or ‘oonce se ooncha banda …poty pe baithe nanga’. The cause – lack of communication because we are not able to gel..’not able to gel ’ due to awkward reasons like avoiding a UPite ,not because of his body odor but because of his simple yet solid Bhojpuri.. Due to some excellent communication we have caught hold of most of the Silicon Valley , and due to the lack of the same we haven’t been able to stop a Naxalbari or a Kashmir.
Problems , be it economical or religious have started sadly, from this imbalance and amazingly the solution lies in that culture itself,in its scriptures ,philosophies and stories which can only do good if each and every Indian understands in the same way, in the same feel , in the same spirit , in the same language-HINDUSTANI..so that in these day when we are bleeding blue …we can live that old adage which has been limited only to our songbooks----HINDI HAIN HUM WATAN HAI..HINDUSTAN HAMAARA………
PS – King’s Speech(though in English) was a feast to watch.
PPS – Sorry for writing this up in English.
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