This post is dedicated to folks who can relate to this picture!
Every time people have asked whether I can speak Hindi i would proudly say Yes and recite any of the following :"Hum Aapke hain kaun" / "Dilwale Dulhaniya Ley Jayenge". For me, that is Hindi. Thats all is Hindi! Well don't blame me, blame it all on Doordharshan.
As a 90's kid, my only Media entertainment was Doordharshan / DD channel. I have always enjoyed watching my cartoons in Hindi and had no qualms about it. In fact I could clearly understand most of the words my favorite characters spoke - Mowgli,Uncle Scrooge, He-Man, Malgudi Days, Kabuli Wala... those were the days! Infact I re-call having a sing-along party with my elder cousins and aunts back in those days, gloriously singing all 90 Hindi hits.Who can forget "Akele Hain" or " Papa Kehthe hain" or "Choli Ke Peechae".
However things slowly changed when Hindi serials were dubbed pathetically in Tamil.
I re-call rushing from school early to watch my favourite Junoon serial, only to hear the title song being sung as "Pidivaadhaam...Pidivaadhaam...Pidivaadhaam..! Oh who can forget Mini (played by Kitu Gidwani) and all our grandmothers cursing her with all authority.
Yes, DD was successful in making elders and grandparents getting glued to Tamil dubbed serials however it clearly ended our connect to Hindi language for good. Slowly and steadily, various cable channels took over and there was no turning back. At school,tamil was my second language which later swapped to French to boost my board exam score. Hence Hindi, which was earlier a necessity became a luxury and soon was not sought at all.
Cut and fast forward 20 years - I join a company head quartered in one of the metro cities in North India.
The horror started when all business meetings were addressed in Hindi, All jokes circulated on whats app group was in Hindi and I had no choice but to sit there and read it like a ginger -eating- Bandar! This adventure went to a different level during my official visit. For every conversation that went by in Hindi, I was seated there clueless and smiling nervously like a constipated 5 year old!
To top it all, there were these classic questions asked "Oh your a South Indian, how come you are fair skinned"? or folks randomly patting my shoulder and saying "Enna rascala" and later saying it is famous Rajinikanth's dialogue. I will be like...
Months passed by, the "Ginger eating Bandar" moments continued. I adapted well, made some great friends across teams and laughed along while trolled. Until one of my official trip to Hyderabad where i was stuck with driver, who spoke only Hindi and hardly any English. Irony is i speak telugu and he didn't! It was quite a struggle and by the end of the ordeal i was exasperated and felt vulnerable, since I was 30 kms away from city travelling alone.
I was really angry at myself for have not mastered a language which was close to me as a child, yet have mastered couple of foreign languages over last decade. By all means, i take great pride in my mother tongue but that doesn't mean i wont embrace a new language. After all, knowledge is power. This hit me hard and i swore to myself that i will master this too.
Fast Forward few weeks, here Iam in Spoken Hindi class which promises to make me a Hindi Pandit within 2 months. Chalo Dekhate hain!:)
PS : I googled the last sentence ;P
