Mother Tongue - tied

A week ago, I was shopping at this store in Chicago. As usual I was just pulling out shirts one after the other and acting very choosy. By now, I have mastered the art of looking at the all-important price tag when nobody is looking and then changing my expression to disapproval with the occasional tch tch and placing the shirt carefully where it belonged. God forbid the sales rep accosts while you are going through this sacred routine and interjects with the oh-so-cliched " Is there anything I can help you with?" , "Anything particular you were looking for?". This is what I would describe as a spiritual dilemma. Of course I am not looking for anything particular. Well of course if you can find me something which looks like its worth fifty bucks and costs only twenty....... then we can talk. But otherwise I am just looking for the "sort-by price" button. Unfortunately this is not a website. So you just smile sheepishly and assure the rep that you are doing fine.

After a few runs of this routine, I had to think of other creative excuses. But like Calvin says "you can turn on creativity like a faucet". You need to be in the right mood which of course is "last minute panic". So while I was staring vacantly and singing to myself, a sales rep appeared out of nowhere to offer "assistance" and this time, I really had nothing to say to exonerate myself and found myself blurting out, "I am waiting for my friends". Thankfully, he swallowed the excuse without much ado and then the two of us got talking with the usual "where are you from", "how do you like chicago". I have absolutely no enthusiasm to reproduce the conversation here. But to help you fill in the gaps, I have a suggestion. Walk up to any coffee shop anywhere in the US and start talking about (what else?) the weather. Wait.... actually dont go anywhere. I dont trust you to return! So we had some innocuous conversation during which he casually complimented me on my good English( the first time that it has happened since , well.. hmm. hmm......... forget it!). I humbly replied that it was because we had most of our education in English.

That evening, we went across to this jazz club and while listening to some traditional jazz, I was turning over the conversation in my mind ( Why?? Well, obviously because that was the first time somebody had complimented me in , well, a long time). As time went by and the bluesy songs started playing, the spirit of self-congratulation slowly melted and I started realising that it was really nothing to be proud about. I recalled the several incidents when I tried to convey something other than abuses in Kannada and how miserably I had failed. I remembered how many times I had mercilessly switched channels whenever I saw the yin-yang symbol in the top right corner; only to stop this meandering when I reached MTV. I realised the damage the "English medium school" had caused.

I understand that writing this article itself is an expression of the apathy of the situation. This whole charade of trying to express our thoughts in what will always remain a foreign language is seriously changing the socio-cultural physiognomy of India. The hankering for "English medium schools" or "convent schools", the decline of our culture and art and the systematic excision from our original cultural identity; all promise to leave us permanently wounded. We are creating, in metropolitans, a whole generation of Indians, who have as little to do with Indian culture as polity has with politics. Our mother tongues have suddenly become these exotic commodities reserved for "cultural" occasions. We walk around with our English sensibilities acting too sophisticated for our own culture, estranged from our own identity, we "tolerate" it as a vestige from the past thus eroding its importance from generation to generation.

A lot of people seem to convince themselves with the argument that English is serving as the (pseudo) mother tongue for this new generation and that works perfectly fine since its just a medium of communication. A very naive thing to say. It is accepted worldwide that there is a close relation between the language and societal characteristics. Its time we shoved aside all that rhetoric about "global village" and experiencing other cultures. We are just rationalizing what could become a catastrophic error. Heaven knows that each community is different. The only thing one can admit about a global village is that we should have enough tolerance to co-exist peacefully with other cultures and learn from these other cultures. Here we are talking about a systematic decimation of our own culture.

I, unlike George Dubya, believe in genetics and evolution. If there's one thing I have learnt from it, its that my genetic makeup is trained in a certain way based on the generations before me. My reflexes, my impulses, my creativity: all of these are tuned to a certain wavelength. Language forms an integral part of this identity. Over the course of 50 years, we have switched not JUST a language, we have shifted lifestyles. The houses we build, the music we make, the art we create all of these have undergone a sea change. But there is nothing wrong with change, is there? Of course not. But there is something wrong with the nature of this change. We lull ourselves into a false sense of security by saying that this is just the merging of cultures while overlooking the serious problem at hand. By hankering for that English medium school, we are going one step closer to ensuring that the kid is never going to read any novel in its mother tongue. Its never going to find words in English to express the complex emotions its genes manufacture. Its probably never going to hear any Indian music or appreciate any Indian art. And chances are it might even feel a scorn for its own culture.

If you think, I am making a mountain out of a molehill, look around you. How many people in their middle ages have read one single book in any Indian language? How many have any appreciation of Indian classical music? How many have HEARD of Raja Ravi Verma? I am guessing not many. And these facts are not in the least bit surprising to me. How do you expect the generation to relate to its culture when you take away the medium?

If you are still not convinced, look at any Indian metropolitan. We seem to gloat over the fact that we almost look like any big city in the world. Is that what we want. This pathetic paucity of imagination where we build building after building, train hordes of men like machines to talk the talk so they can waste away in call centres. We replace our "amma " and "appa" with "mummy" and "daddy". We boo when we hear an invocation from the Vedas and cheer when we hear some sick artist produce an impression of Backstreet Boys. We stow away our kurtas 'cos its uncool and have no qualms about wearing torn jeans instead. We go ahead and buy MJ cds and groove to them while Bharatanatyam is just something you have to put up with when you want to please your grandparents. What would you attribute all this to? I'd say the answer is pretty clear. The British did a pretty darn good job!! They managed to impress on the Indian psyche, quite in Animal Farm style, " English good, Indian bad", "English cool , Indian uncool". We got our freedom alright but we forgot that we had signed away the rights to our identity as well. And once the wheels were rolling, there was no looking back. We now congratulate ourselves on our English speaking skills. It gives us software and call centre jobs, you see.

So what measures can we use to remedy the situation. The typical Indian Government's answer would be to introduce reservations or introduce compulsions of some sort. I am not so sure these measures work. The ideal thing of course, would be if every Indian makes sure we reinforce those thin strings which remain between us and our culture. But is that going to happen? I very seriously doubt it given the current situation.