The famous Marathi author P.L. Deshpande once said that if an average Mumbaikar is scared of anything then it is the Hindi language. Why so?, you may ask. It is because most of us have been raised speaking our mother tongues at home all through childhood and mostly English at school.
Although I was brought up in Mumbai - the capital of Bollywood Hindi movies, my own adventures with Hindi only began when I ventured out of school and joined Junior College (11th Standard). The Hindi in Mumbai is a dialect of its own. The typical Mumbaiyya version has a lot influence of one's mother-tongue, interspersed with words from other languages and a heavy accent. No one really judges you as long as the message gets through.
When I moved to Pune to study, my class was full of people from different parts of the country. Initially when I would speak Hindi, the North Indians would scrunch up their faces with a curiosity that said, “What Hindi is that?!”. I caught on to this dissent very quickly and it made me switch to English. After that, I became “that hep girl” in class who spoke only English. But soon, I learnt the hi-fi Hindi and felt like I have won.
When I moved back to Mumbai, I flaunted my newly-learnt Hindi with my old friends. Much to my surprise, it was their turn to scrunch up their faces. Mumbaikars never hide their feedback. They call out aberrations and discuss them in detail until you get it. “Ay! Teri hindi ko kya hua?? Kya bolrai hai tu”. I put my nose high up in the air and shared my newfound knowledge with them - what they have been talking so far has been the wrong kind of Hindi. Needless to say, I was ridiculed.
So now I switch my Hindi, depending on my audience. When I am not sure, English comes to my rescue. Thankfully, in Bangalore, one can easily survive with English.
I am amazed when Bangaloreans call me a North Indian. And the North Indians call me a South Indian. I am surely not either of those. Back home, we never call ourselves anything really - North nor South Indians! So, what is really my identity? I think ‘West Indian’ fits best. :-)
