English Vinglish!

Why do I do this? I so much dislike this practice of mine, where I use movie names as my blog titles! Why do I do this then? To increase the blog hit over search engine redirections? I don’t think I even knew of such a thing, until recently. May be it’s my simple liking for the movie? What about this particular one then? I’ve not seen ‘English Vinglish’! So may be, my affinity to movie titles may simply be as they somehow can be viewed associated to the actual things that happen around.

I am a Tamilian by birth. Brought up as a Malayali, often. Educated in English medium. Obviously, suggesting that I am pretty fluent in the three languages. Of course, there’s Hindi. And Sanskrit. And Kannada. Languages that I was exposed to, at various points of life, but could never gain enough fluency in. Language is just a medium to communicate. Conveying your thoughts to someone else, who might be interested, is the whole point. And the choice on the medium of communication,i.e. language, is often made based on the comfort levels of the involved parties, unless there’s a situational specification to it. But in the current scenario ‘here’, what we see is a totally stupid and twisted English drama! Like English is the most wonderful thing that ever happened to humanity! English is a good language. Awesome I must say, considering the ease of conveying intense emotions in simple words. Most of us would find it too much better and relieving to yell and shout at somebody in English, than in our own mothertongue. Coz it feels less intense and rude.You’d want to propose to someone in English, coz that takes away a good portion of the embarrassment. You’d want to dial up a Home Delivery service or go to a Customer Care Centre and talk in English, coz that’d keep the conversation shorter and crispier. And trust me, things get done easier and sooner, when you accentuate your tone!

But beyond all this, at some point all you wanna hear and cherish is your own language, in which you uttered your first words to the world. And definitely, from some people, you can’t even think of hearing any other tongue! That mishap was today! When someone screamed at the top of their voice, But is it lighting??”. For the record, that was a concern about the tube light. I didn’t want to laugh. It was not as funny as it was pitiful. Why do people put so much effort in mastering a language like it’s the end of the world! English Vinglish bina kya life! Indeed.