“Hey, I am calling from Delhi and wish to place an order with you ….. ”
“Hey can I please get an extra tissue?”
“Hello can you please tell me the price of this dress after discount?”
Doesn’t it sound familiar to you? Don’t you use such sentences in your daily life, too often? Even when it is not required, we actually use this language in our lives. My problem is not with the language or its use. My thoughts wander to make me question why do we use it? Why do we use it so often? Don’t you agree that you feel a little more stylish and confident when you are actually talking to someone in English? No matter you are just at a store or called a customer care or placing an order for home delivery, you use not your mother tongue but English. Why?
I remember an incident when I met a German woman. She was having some difficulty to find her way and when I noticed that I went to her and helped her out. In lieu of my help she said a proper Namaste with her hands folded. That touched me a lot. I put it up on my Facebook too. But the other day a friend of mine pointed out, “what was so moving about that?”. “Do you think if you go to Germany or Italy or any other place in Europe and you say some word of their language they will also feel “moved”, so much that they put it up on their Facebook account? Why are we all so colonized?”
I had no answer. I really do not have a colonized mentality when it comes to considering my language inferior and English superior. But somewhere like all of us, I too am with a colonized mentally. And my friend made me realize that. I do not aim to generalize anything here. But I am sure somewhere we are all colonized. I am sure somewhere we all feel that we should talk in English, we should not use Hindi at certain places or it will be so uncool and unsophisticated. When we suddenly come across elderly people we start using Hindi as we generally assume they will not understand English. But that is not so. I feel that the elderly people, those of my grandparent’s generation I mean, are much more confident of their mother tongue and capable enough to not feel ashamed of using it no matter where they go. Not many of us are proud and comfortable using Hindi everywhere. I am myself a student of English literature. I sometimes quiz myself, “if I am so much in love with literature why didn’t I instead of English study Hindi? Do I have any rights to claim my patriotism yet?”
I agree English has become the language of opportunity. English is the language that has become a must to get good jobs. But why not we just make sure that we don’t get so engrossed with this language of our past colonizers so much that we undermine our own language? Why cannot we freely use Hindi, by freely I mean without feeling uncomfortable, uncool and unsophisticated, in our day to day life, like talking to the Pizza delivery boy or the store manager or our beautician etc. Why?
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