Hindi's Versatility

                Sometimes I am amazed by the versatility of Hindi and other South Asian languages in the expansion of globalization and the reign of English as ruling lingua franca here in the 21st Century. So far I've noticed that Hindi/Urdu, along with Panjabi, Gujarati, and Tamil, are almost ambidextrous when it comes to incorporation of English speech and writing into their languages, which leads to exploration of some interesting aspects of the broad desi mentality.

                First, we start with speech. In my time studying Hindi/Urdu and other desi languages, I've been around a lot of desi people who use English words and phrases in context with their native tongue without any kind of hesitation. I remember wondering why a lot of desis used this mixed language, this khichri bhasha, when it dawned on me that the British Raj had a great hand in it with their widespread reign and the unification of a bunch of desis who didn't speak the same local languages under the banner of English. It could be argued that this basis of English was one of the great reasons why India wasn't split up into numerous localities after Partition from Pakistan and Independence in 1947, but I won't touch that, other than the fact that the only way desis from all over communicate today both professionally and casually is mainly through English, despite the push in Nehru's India for Hindi as the dominant national language (opposed virulently by a strong South Indian sentiment for Tamil and Telugu). But with this British hand on India's past, English is used readily and incorporated into local languages without a second thought, though maybe NRIs do it more than stay-at-desh desis because English has more of a pervasive presence. This mish-mash of Hindi and English is often called Hinglish and has gotten popular in advertisements ( think of Pepsi's Hindi slogan of  Yeh Dil Maange More! or the back-and-forth Hinglish of films like In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones or Love Aaj Kal). I myself use Hinglish all the time, using Hindi phrases and words most of the time and English words when I'm not familiar with how to translate an idea quickly or when I don't know the Hindi/Urdu word for something. It's catchy, quirky, a blend of the familiar world of English returned with the zany Hindi colloquialisms, a taste of elegant British tea with a spoonful of chai masala thrown in. Bole to, it's ek dum unique and zabardast, the khichri bhasha of the British Raj badshah and the jhakaas Bombay-wallah tapori. Hinglish Zindabad!

                But Hindi's versatility doesn't just lie there. Something I've noticed that I've never seen mentioned deserves a note here. People always talk about Hinglish and its effect on speech, but what about Hindi's adjustment to the Roman script itself? Traditionally, Hindi is written with the Devanagari script, which I learned while I was in middle school, Urdu is written with an adapted version of Arabic script in a poetic style called Nastaliq, Panjabi is written in Gurmukhi (or Shahmukhi, in Pakistan), Gujarati is written with the Gujarati script, etc. Yet because a lot of desis use English when writing to eachother, they often transliterate the words of their native tongue into Roman script, and now it's led to desis writing to eachother in Roman script, especially in e-mails or on posted comments on YouTube. Why is this? I think it's because, since computers and the Internet have ushered most desis into the English-dominated world, to type in Hindi fonts requires an extra effort, an extra discipline to something is otherwise fun and easy to do (since the letters of the fonts are all scrambled anyway when they are put onto computer keys and it could take an hour or so to write a simple note to a friend). The same would go for other desi languages, which have mostly incorporated the Roman script to write their words and phrases ( except maybe Tamil, which I've noticed is generally kept in its native script whenever I see it).  Understand, too, that desis have a history of pragmatic thought which comes through in their collective cultures, and the attitude when it comes to this kind of situation is that of "kuchh bhi chalega", or  "anything goes." That is, as long as the Romanized transliterations of their languages helps them to convey the idea they want to convey to the reader, it'll do. It's the old attitude that Pavan K. Verma describes in his book Being Indian through the single word jugaad, which, though a difficult word to translate exactly, is a way of getting through a situation using whatever means is available. It can be used to talk about the car mechanic who fixes his malfunctioning car's leaking radiator with the crude improvisation of chewing gum if he doesn't have the right compound to fix it with or it can be used to talk about the desi man abroad who, sitting at the computer and unable to get the fonts to work, resorts to transliteration. In any matter, this adaptation of Hindi and other desi languages through Roman script may be the next necessary step to communication in the 21^st Century.

When Will America Wake Up To Hindi Films?



Amitabh Bachchan--The Big B



        

Shah Rukh Khan

                On some evenings the upstairs room in my family's house is aglow with light from old Hindi films on the VCR, generally old Technicolor pictures produced during the 1970s. In the room adjacent is an entire dresser drawer devoted to old films I cadged from a local desi grocery store, lining the insides like prized trophies. Deewaar, Silsila, Sharaabi. I generally watch these films over and over, since I've now got an extensive library of Hindi films from two years of college. But I can't help but feel alienated when my family and American culture hardly know anything about Bollywood and really don't care to know.  And  I feel a sense of loss that they don't have a clue who Amitabh Bachchan is, let alone some of the other giants of the Hindi film industry.

                Bollywood has made a name for itself through globalization in the past half-century, especially in other Third World countries. Instead of remaining in India for the primary Indian audiences, Bollywood films have been exported to other countries, including Afghanistan, Pakistan (pirated in because it's illegal), Malaysia, and even Western countries such as Russia and Germany. Though it's more common nowadays to see copies of SRK (Shah Rukh Khan) films like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and DDLJ (Dilwale Dulhania Le Jaayenge) in far-flung markets (including America), even before the economic boom of the nineties there were exports of  common Hindi films. Among these films were some of the early blockbusters, generally Raj Kapoor productions. According to Dev Anand in his autobiography Romancing with Life, the Raj Kapoor film Awara was very popular in the former Soviet Union, so much so that there was a Russian soundtrack released to the film. When at a party in Moscow, Anand was asked if he was 'from the land of Awara.' This was even before the market growth for India in the early nineties, when Bollywood production houses started making films for the foreign markets where a lot of N.R.I.s had settled.  In Malaysia, pop music has been influenced heavily by the tunes from Hindi films; I found a duet between the Malaysian singers M. Sharif and Zaleha Hamid, Setia Menuggu, that was the same tune as the Lata and Mukesh duet Main Chali Main. For further proof, there was another song by Salih Yaacob with Malaysian words put to A.R. Rahman's Chhoti Si Aasha, the famous song from Roja. And according to Pankaj Mishra in his book Temptations of the West, the Middle East is also aflame with Bollywood films. Not to mention Suketu Mehta's testimony in National Geographic that while living in Queens, New York, immigrants from countries other than India ( Uzbeks, Greeks, and Pakistanis are specifically mentioned) would turn the Hindi movie show  "Vision of Asia" and sing along to the Hindi film songs being shown. It seems that the whole world is slightly impacted, in one way or another, by the globalization of Hindi films.

                But not, obviously, America. Living here all of my life, I have never heard any white Americans reference Hindi films, or give them any time of day in conversations.  Whenever I try to mention Dilip Kumar or Rajesh Khanna, or even Amitabh Bachchan, I receive strange looks and the annoyed and disinterested response of "Who?” I am talking about something completely foreign.  I was raised in a white family, watching Hollywood movies, and I never heard any talk of famous Bollywood actors. The only people talked about were big modern actors, such as Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman, Arnold Schwartzeneggar, along with the names of other actors. And for the older times, Humphery Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Wayne, Steve McQueen, and other legends.  I was then surprised, watching Hindi films and reading books and online articles about Bollywood, that Amitabh Bachchan is recognized and revered worldwide (especially after his close shave with death in 1983 when doing stuntwork for Coolie) and that Shah Rukh Khan is a bigger star than Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt combined. How could it be, I wondered, that I had never heard of these celluloid stars?

                I think that an aspect of American ignorance to Bollywood can be found in American attachment to Hollywood, which a recognized brand worldwide of American pride and creativity. It is a major industry in America, something that most Americans revere, and it even has  a sense of identity that Americans cling to; it's a major social shaper of mentality here,  something that preserves (or re-interprets) the American pereceptions of themselves and the world that surrounds them. It also seems that America, being the world's superpower, a dominant trading power in the world, has an expectation that it be recognized, a self-absorbtion with itself despite the tapestry of diversity in the world. Rightly so that it is a superpower, this does not mean that America ought to push this dominance into a kind of hubris (as it already has). With the expectation of recognition, America does not recognize much of the world's offers, promoting itself above the others, much like a group of clique-oriented American teenagers. Another reason for Bollywood's lack of influence in America might be that Bollywod doesn't promote the values that American films portray (pragmatism, lack of conventional morality, etc.), along with their formats. America also does not seem to have a very high opinion of India either. Though it's more common to see exports of things Indian  (or slightly adapted things Indian) in America, a lot of people still view it as a poverty-ridden, filthy country that isn't good for much except for computer coolies who take care of their inconveniences. Indian (and other South Asian) immigrants to the U.S. aren't treated with much respect in many ways either, whether it be by ethnic persecution ( such as the Dotbuster groups in New Jersey in the early nineties who beat and/or murdered "dotheads") or by prejudices in the workplace. If they aren't seen as being very valuable, or even very desirable, by the American public, then the logic dictates that parts of their culture not be held high or dabbled in much, leaving Bollywood ( and the South Indian film industry) mostly in the dust. And, as a last note, few Americans have any knowledge of Hindi (excluding yours truly), and thus the barrier becomes even higher. 

                It looks like Hindi films have about as much likelihood of reaching American audiences as cricket does of replacing American baseball. It may just be Bollywood’s last frontier.