My Experiments with Hindi

My knowledge of Hindi is remarkably deficient despite my living in the northern parts of India for three whole decades.

The language never appealed to me. Rather, my Hindi teachers at school, without exception, were the coarsest people I ever met in that period of my life and they created my aversion to Hindi. Someone told me later that those who took up Hindi as their academic major in Kerala were people who failed to secure admission to any other course. That is, if you’re good for nothing else, then go for Hindi. And so they end up as disgruntled people. We students became the victims of that discontent. I don’t know if this theory is correct, however.

Though I studied Hindi as my third language (there was no other option) at school for six years, I couldn’t speak one good sentence in that language when I turned my back on school happily and with immense relief after the tenth grade. Of course, I could manage some simple sentences like में लड़का हू। [I am a boy.] A few lines from a poem remained with me for many years: पर्वत पर से आती सरिता… That was more or less an imitation of Tennyson’s poem ‘The Brook’ though I hadn’t even heard of Tennyson when I was forced to commit ‘Sarita’ to memory.

Later, while I was doing a two-year philosophy course as part of my ecclesiastical (mis)pursuit, I was given an option to choose between Hindi and Tamil. I chose Tamil merely out of spite for my earlier Hindi teachers. Ironically, knowledge of Hindi became important to me sooner rather than later. South India couldn’t give me a job when I graduated.

My first job was in Shillong where most people spoke English fluently and hence my ignorance of Hindi didn’t matter much except in the markets and the public transport. The bus conductors in Shillong’s lousy little tin cabins that the city buses were gave me the biggest urge to learn Hindi. I say ‘lousy’ because those buses would take almost an hour to travel 8 km, the distance from the bus terminal near my school to the place of my residence. I used to sit and read novels during those journeys. In case you didn’t manage to get a seat, it was hell. The conductor would come every now and then and push you saying आगे बढ़ो (move forward) even if you’re standing right in front of the bus. Those tribal boys who worked as conductors didn’t know more Hindi than that, I think. But I wanted to learn Hindi, enough to tell them not to manhandle passengers. I tried too. But the effort was abandoned soon when I realised that bus conductors in Shillong didn’t take lessons in civility from passengers.

When I took up job in Delhi, I was told explicitly by the school’s management not to learn Hindi. “Let the students speak only in English to you.” I took that injunction too seriously. My natural aversion to Hindi must have been the real impetus.

Now, for the last ten years, I have been living in Kerala where Hindi has no more role to play than in my schooldays of Sarita, the brook. But I joined a free Hindi course with Duolingo last week. The reason: all the workers I get for any job now in my village are from North India. Most of them know enough Malayalam to manage daily affairs. But for effective communication, some knowledge of Hindi will help, I decided.

Moreover, I’m learning some very innovative as well as effective methods of language learning from Duolingo. Now I’m not quite sure whether it is Hindi or Duolingo’s teaching methodology that appeals more to me.