Whether we like to admit it or not, we are a nation obsessed with English. With ‘oops’ being our new ‘aiyo’, and our mother tongues being banned from our dining tables, we cannot afford to not know English. Without English, what will you say, and to whom, wonders Shinie Antony
It is not just Sridevi who stopped making laddoos to learn some English-Vinglish. Millions of desis are tucking in their pallus to master this foreign bhasha at spoken English classes all over the countryside. We are willing to pay through our nose, literally and figuratively, to ‘say good English’.
Racing past the US, with 350 million yakking in English against their 300 million, Indians are all set to be more than half the planet’s English speakers in the coming decade. It is a new dawn where the Indian rooster officially crows cock-a-doodle-do and not in its grandma’s dialects of kokra-ko or kukdoo-koo.
‘Oops’ is the new ‘aiyo’. Indian English is editing itself constantly. ‘Myself Meeta, your good name?’ is ‘hey, me Meets.’ and an ‘expired father’ is now the old man who passed away. The need for Indian English in India is valid; where else would we pre-pone, seek anticipatory bail or dearness allowance, pay hawala, criticise the Emergency period, enter via backside, and do the needful? And Indian English forms an organic and necessary linguistic bridge between English and every Indian language, from Assamese to Urdu.
It absorbs, adapts and adjusts accents, providing an elasticity that makes grappling with unfamiliar words and inflections of the incoming lingo a lot easier. But its primary function is to tide over to a new lingua franca: you can look now, English is done changing.
Having decided to go all the way, we are discovering that this tongue can twang! Papsi is now officially Pepsi, and cock is coke. Even snakes are snacks. The peddlers who accost you in Khajuraho have stopped selling ‘sax’, which is nothing to do with the blues or jazz but a more direct invite of a personal nature. The Bollywood villain who used to rape with a limited English vocabulary — ‘come on, darrrling’ — is now the strong and silent type. The vamp too is replaced by the item girl in an item number.
From its previous exotic and stuttering persona, English has graduated to being a crucial key to modern existence. You cannot not know English. Having learnt this painfully at parties where husband’s female colleagues laugh faster than Murugan’s quick gun at jokes and in playgrounds where other moms halt their speedy kids with smart-speak, housewives have banned Tamil/Tulu from the dining table. This need transcends mere language and manifests itself on kitchen shelves where olive oil overtakes coconut and mustard oils. Speaking English is as mandatory as eating pizza and pasta.
For English demands a whole new wardrobe. The dark or wheatish apply whiteness creams to ‘get colour’ or a paler pelt. Sartorially speaking, sari genes are fast converting to jeans. The current generation wonders why anyone in their right mind would drape a bed-sheet around themselves and then attempt to walk. The robust belly laugh is replaced by a sophisticated baring of teeth. The air-kissers at weddings are louder than chest-thumpers at funerals. Tea is sipped from cups and not straight from the saucer.
And hence we arrive at the crux of the English matter. It is not just about speaking it, it is about living it. English, so long dismissed as an aspirational language, is not all talk. One has to walk the talk. As Amitabh Bachchan put it baldly in one of his many, many films: “I can talk English, I can walk English and I can laugh English because English is a very funny language.”
One hears a senior citizen brag, “I used to sleep-talk in English!” That was the ultimate proof of parlance for people of a certain vintage, that one even slumbered in this language. Dreamum-wakepum is now in English.
The politically correct rue that Hindi newspapers are falling by the wayside but while they subscribe to Malayalam papers for their parents, the kids read English dailies. Second languages at schools are usually French or any foreign one. At PTAs, parents lament teachers’ accents and in staff meetings, teachers moan about parental pronunciation.
The blame game clarifies the synchronised intent: to anglicise. And in whatever language they are thinking this, the thought is the same, that English is a must. That the voice inside the head, the tongue inside the mind, the gut feeling, the blind instinct, the heartbeat, must all enunciate in perfect English, or as we say, good English. Because, boy, there is bad English lurking in street corners, waiting to drag us back to the dark ages.
To combat, we mock Indian English; we not only never utter it, but also quote it to establish firmly that we know the difference. It is, in the hands of humorists, putty. ‘I have one child, a ladies’, means the person has a daughter. ‘My Mrs’ is a wife and ‘keep’ is a gold-digging girlfriend.
And when it comes to accents, the comic potential is unending. In a colonisation of the vocal chords, we stopped swapping ‘shame’ for ‘same’ and vice versa. The erstwhile ‘da’ is now ‘dude’. No-ma, no one is line maaroing or pataoing anymore, they are all coolness on their FB page, declaring their relationship status in worldly words.
The need for a correct way to speak English, to oil its hinges while still in mouth or mind, is paramount. That is what separates the haves from the have-nots of the Oxford English Dictionary. The art of articulation is big business and almost an over-the-counter product. After all, E L James wouldn’t have become so rich if she couldn’t spell.
All she did to porn was bring the right spellings. Indians who wrote, “She shook the bear in her glass, he took off his jokeys to show his pennies and then they began to moo faster and faster,” will now be wanting to knowing why E L James is better than them. It is not the act — after all, we are from the Kamasutra country — the selling is in the telling.
After most of the Indian English usages were caricatured or catalogued, users got wise to them. “You are too hot” or “he is a cool guy” are no longer temperature updates. Don’t angry the sticklers by translating starkly from mother tongue. Grammar is god.
As one can see, in every sphere, English is the new messiah leading the way. The writing on the wall is not in any known Indian script. Whether you are a corporate climber or a daydreamer, English is everything. Without English, what will you say, and to whom? With English, however, we hope to live ‘happily ever after’, a phrase uniquely English for advertising fairy tales.
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