HUMOUR: DECCAN HERALD/ENGLISH AS WE USE HER

There is a hoary chestnut of a tale that periodically does the round in India’s ad 

 circles. A doughty veteran wanted the Indian branch of his advertising firm to
 retain a catchy slogan he had put to effective use all over the West. The
 catchline went ‘Lads and Lasses, go for it’. 

“But sir,” bleated one brave Indian soul, “will it work, in India?”

and the Indian translation/transliteration ultimately read ‘Ladoos and Lassis,

 go for it’. Amidst gales of ensuing laughter, it was forcibly borne upon the 

great man that even the great unifying language of English has its pitfalls 

especially in what is politely known as the developing nations! But ladies 

and gentles, that’s just how we use English in India. 

Look around you and the examples not only spring at you, they thwack you 

hard sometimes. ‘Fine for plucking Flores: Rs 50%’ admonishes a notice 

board at Doddabetta in the Nilgiris. Far away from the Blue Mountains of 

the south, beside a winding road that leads out of Srinagar, a roadside tea 

shop offers something unique: ‘We answer Nature’s Call for you’ it says, 

referring, one imagines, to the existence of a bathroom on the premises. 

All along the highways of the country, dabhas offer an intriguing mix of the

 original Punjabi fare mixed with local cuisine: it’s Kongu Panchabi food 

Look at the flourishing literature - with a dash of dashing poetry thrown in - 

on the back of our trucks. ‘Horn OK Tata’ please they cajole and command 

 simultaneously. ‘Don’t stare badly, Blackface’, I read once, deeply impressed 

 at this transliteration of the famous ‘Boori nazar wale, tera mooh kala’. 

Get into conversation with a citizen of small town India, west, east, north 

And that’s the key. In almost all of suburban India and a larger part of urban 

India than they would like to let on, it’s a particular brand of Indian English 

Many southerners would read ‘Rocky sure is a cho-chweet mard, no?’ 

with bemusement, shake their heads and say, “OK, da, let’s go put off one 

tea.” To the Hinglish kitty have now been added Kinglish, Tinglish, Malglish, 

and of course, Laloo-glish.

While many will have it that the actual progenitor of this working language 

 is the redoubtable Salman Rushdie, the truth is still, as Chris Carter and 

 the X Files  team would have it, out there. Rushdie certainly revolutionised 

 literature with his poignant Indian-ness of style and content. Midnight’s 

 Children opened the door for other literary luminaries like Vikram Seth,

 Arundhati Roy, Hari Kunzru  to step through, as well as all the pretenders

 who came in their wake. Suddenly it became cool to read about People 

who are Excitable and Voluble. And Speak in a Particular Way. 

Coming back to the mad ad world, they were quick to jump on the bandwagon

 even if they weren’t too sure just where it was heading. And so the merry 

 hodgepodge of English and regional dialects continued, selling everything from 

cakes to Cokes to cosmetics and selling them super-successfully. Deejays and 

veejays spouted sagacious sayings in a mix of English, Hindi, Bhojpuri, Kannada, 

Tamil, what have you. Radio City Bangalore has its delightful Lingo Leela, 

and frequently has intrepid listeners call in and sing translations of popular 

English songs. Which leads to amalgamations of the following sort: Backstreet 

Boys’ Backstreet’s Back, All Right becomes Pichla galli lauta, theek hai. 

Laugh if you must but hey, it works, right? Ditto for all those intrepid films

 made by indie filmmakers in not-so-Queen’s-English, films like Jhankar Beats and 

the like.

Out in the so-called sticks, where a pizza is rightly spelt ‘pijja’, they 

 have done away with pretensions altogether. 

A look at regional papers will throw up fascinating tid-bits. Here is a headline 

that reads ‘Sensation prevailed due to kidnap of boy.’ There is a  course 

for ‘short-heighted’ men; elsewhere, you are advised that to aim for 

 ‘small goal’ is a crime. 

The jury is still out on the print media, though. Are they following archaic 

 British traditions of language, being ultra-reader friendly or is it just plain 

confusion? Or maybe all of the above? Which is probably why we read of

 train passengers being ‘looted’ or gratitude ‘being paid’ to some one. 

 Sometimes it’s sheer inability to get a handle on English, of course: ‘After the 

burglary, he was a sadder and wizened man’ read one unfortunate report; 

 another talked of being  ‘spell-binded.’ 

And I cannot end this piece sans my all-time favorite, a headline which appeared 

in one of the country’s leading dailies, quite a few years ago. ‘CM sore over 

Bangarappa’s mum’ it said. Dumbfounded perusal of the story made it clear that 

the CM was upset at Mr Bangarappa’s silence on some issue. Mum’s the word, 

of course… and yes, that works, too!