A Linguistic Dilemma: Of Language, Culture And Historical Influence

Today I can understand why. I can relate to the helplessness bred in generations of submissive women, “Abala Nari”, (Disempowered woman), who wept from despair, from frustration, pleading silently for understanding. It is a cultural thing, tears are the power tool of the disenfranchised as much as it is their therapy and catharsis. It irritated me so much as a teenager, to see our on-screen heroines break down in tears of compromise, to shame and plead patriarchy into correct behaviour.

The fight I had in me was commendable but I had been allowed it from infancy. The women our actresses portrayed on screen were those sheltered souls educated at home, within the domestic paradigm. Empowerment is a far cry, from the lives they led. I recall scoffing at the Hindi movies of the eighties for making the heroine dance around a tree, nine times out of ten, emerging in a bright new flouncy costume after every turn! Boy did those colourful costume changes hurt my eyes! I associated tasteful dressing with neutral shades and tones, teaming and pairing up complimentary colours. Where did I get that?

Pastel shades, complementary tones, as opposed to garish contrasting shades paired with blithe abandon?

Today I rejoice in our Indian ensemble which is festive and vibrant, pairing hot pink kameezes/blouses with parrot green salwars/balloon leggings, and zari/brocade encrusted bright dupattas( scarves). With our Indian skin tones, it works!

In the same way that a cobalt blue formal shirt teamed with a bright orange pleated skirt may look too much on a pale white alabaster skin? But perhaps not. In the end, I believe in autonomy of choice of couture amongst many other things, again in opposition to the Indian way of thinking, “Aap ruchi se khana, par ruchi se pehna.” (Eat as per your taste, but dress as per others’ taste.)

“Others,” the code word for husband, in Laws, patriarchy, in that order for women.

I was castigated for wearing my hubby’s old cargo shorts outside, by an old-fashioned elderly lady once. Upon pouring my heart out one day to a smart twenty-something young bank executive, dressed in size zero skinny jeans and a midriff top, I was told, “ Toh? Aap Ka husband ke parwa nahin toh unko ya?” (So? If your husband does not object, then what is her problem?) This was the only support I was entitled to, patriarchy still held my reins. I looked at her, born at the end of the eighties, in silent astonishment.

But, western ideas permeate slower than Western wear and makeup. It will get there eventually, synthesizing in a fortuitous manner. Hopefully without a loss of some great Indian values.

To continue with my flirtation with Hindi films, if there was a seaside scene, I remember cringing and counting the seconds till the heroine got dunked in water, invariably wearing a flimsy white dress, or sari, so that she emerged in all her dripping wet, see-through translucence.

It was how our movie directors cannily catered to the sexually repressed Indian male gaze. Teenager-me attributed it to bad taste and sexism. It was sexist, and it was also inescapable in our Indian context. If you wanted to appeal to the broadest section of the masses. This was the only safe outlet for repressed sexuality, male or female, and our directors did it with full awareness, to sell tickets, knowing our Indian censors would tone down anything considered too bold or risqué.

We had a different audience for our movies, very unlike the casual dating scenario of countries in the West. End of the day, our movies sold not-so-dissimilar dreams in different packaging.  They made mistakes, portraying women as fair game for eve teasing and conquest, yes, but on the other hand, they did not have the luxury to show an Indian truck driver asking the cute salesgirl out on a date, let alone brushing her lips with his own!

The camera closed up lingeringly, lovingly on her pouting lips, and then…cut! To the birds, bees, and flowers. Much was left to the imagination. So Like Ursula Andress, our belles rose like sirens from the waves and that much, and that much only was allowed, to sate our appetites. Anything more, and the girl would not be seen as a desirable respectable object of male affection, but as scandalous and depraved.

I did notice, among those cousins and kin, who were brought up on a steady diet of Hindi flicks, a preference for this cinematic mode of communication. As opposed to the more direct physical contact in Western movies, which were something to watch on the sly. This coyness was in fact considered normal and respectable.

It is all about values, mindsets, and boundaries that a culture has assimilated over years of traditional upbringing, which is introduced to us primarily through the medium of communication.

Language is the vehicle of this communication. Handicapped in my mother tongue, I  ridiculed these coy affectations, because they were foreign to the literature I read in English. Instead of finding them endearing and perhaps in better taste, than showing the silhouettes of two bodies humping under a blanket accompanied by harsh guttural grunts and moans.

In fact today I find both extremes unnecessary!

Show me a woman sexily undressing as the bare-chested hero closes the bedroom door and I will get the full picture! I really do not need to see Al Pacino’s butt for an extra dose of gritty realism. Just like I hate my time being wasted by ten unnecessary costume changes followed by a near-miss kiss, and umpteen cloying love songs of our own movies.

I do not deny some movies may need the full Monty, like our Hindi movie Black or say, Pretty Woman. In fact, I loved them both. But unnecessary skin shows are unnecessary skin shows. Those days you could count those moviemakers who strived for authenticity in Hindi or Bengali movies on the ten fingers of your hands. Most of it was parallel or art house cinema which a fourteen or fifteen-year-old could not relate to in entirety. The result was I gave up on our movies, back then, but kept devouring our wonderful home-grown literature.

I had finished Bankim Chandra’s Bengali novels by the time I was fifteen, no mean feat. His language was not at all colloquial but formidable. Yet the love of a gripping tale kept me hooked, making semi-educated guesses at word meanings, or running to ma for help! I still remember the joy in her eyes when I asked her for complicated agglutinated word meanings like Kingkartabyobimud or Shailshikharabat. I had also read a smattering of Tagore’s works and a very small amount of Sharat Chandra, the sacred trinity of Bengali literary figures.

But most of my acquaintance with Tagore was through music. For which I am forever grateful. I consider myself fire and waterproofed from every hurt and trepidation in life because of my familiarity with the profound wisdom and lyrical philosophy of his songs. These are the early gifts of the Magi that I had been fortunate enough to give myself, and it has probably kept me grounded in the spiritual ethos of my origins.

Souls need the succour and nourishment of their own soil. To imbibe the depth and profundity of the whole wide world beyond. If we are to expand our gaze upon the whole of humanity, we must lovingly linger and embrace ancestral essence.

Being amputated too early from proficiency in my mother tongue I suspect causes incomplete expression and depression.

Beautiful though it is to write in English, I feel as though you cannot ever be as good in English as a natural-born native English speaker, who from the cradle onwards has negotiated his way around his tongue, using it to navigate through his joys and sorrows.

We have Indian English as a whole genre. As do many other English-speaking erstwhile colonies of the British Empire. But I feel the greater the familiarity, with the weight and volume of knowledge of our own literature, in our own language, the better our finesse, depth of emotional expression, the ability to be true to ourselves, in Indian English.

And there is always a personal dilemma, a soupçon of instinct inside that asks, this same thought, this same feeling, would I have expressed it even better? Really and truly nailed it had I been proficient in my mother tongue, writing about my experiences in India in an Indian tongue? Would my heart have been better revealed?

I feel just a little handicapped, occasionally using foreign idioms born of foreign experiences for an Indian thought or happening. It still works because we can relate, draw parallels, and understand contextuality. Human beings are after all the same species, part of the same family but something, a richness of flavour, a unique vantage point is lost in translation. Some though, not all.

That intangible soupçon, that inexpressible smidgen, that would satisfy and carry a native reader to a different, more nuanced, and complex place.

There are of course exceptions.