An Indecisive Indian

Railways and Art:  Wheels within wheels now!   I am an officer of Indian railways for the last 35 years. Yet, the drama of a moving train truly hit me one hazy, and lazy, evening between Hindupur and Bangalore. It was on a routine ‘window trailing inspection’. You see, the end wall of an inspection carriage, commonly known as the saloon, has glass lookouts, affording a very graphic view of the track and stations behind a speeding train. A Railway officer sits looking out for whatever he intends to check. I for one would do it frequently for the sheer fun, the ‘feel good’ as you moved through exhilarating images of life. I have read, many times in some form or the other, that locomotives and trains were magnificent, if disturbing creations. Sensational things that became a subject of art in almost every conceivable form, right since their inception some 200 years ago. One can easily understand how a technological marvel, born out of the genius of the hum...

Hindi hain hum, watan hai Hindostan hamara Who's not familiar with these great lines from Iqbal. And these pre-shiqwa and Jawab-e-shiqwa lines of Allama have been the hallmark of contrived, and yet at once natural, Indian nationhood. But do we all understand what it means? At least not those who have been entrusted to promote Hindi as Rajbhasha. All central government Ministries and Departments have a Hindi department to promote usage of Hindi in official work. Unlike the popular perception that they promote "klisht Hindi", that's not the case. Bolchal ki Hindi is also fine, although some may frown upon it. So far, so good. But I detest the way they work, or rather have been programmed to work. Complete bureaucracy. A letter with merely the no. or the signature in Hindi is counted as a Hindi communication. But you can't ridicule it, else you get hauled up by some Hindi committee or suchlike. A example. Some ten year or so earlier, every Hindi meeting ...

The brighter side of India Everyday, we run into forwards with pictures, extolling the brighter side of India. The theme invariably being the same…."there is so much good and progressive in our country so why look at the negatives all the time”. Well, that’s not bad. But the problem is that we don’t want to look at the negatives. To the extent that we tend to ignore, discount and mostly brush it off. Unfortunately, in reality, it is precisely this kind of attitude which seeks to hide the truth. Undoubtedly, there is lot of good in our country. Lets’ be proud of that. But let’s be ashmed about what’s not so good. Or rather abysmal. Consider: An average European village has better infrastructure than an avearge Indian big city. As for cleanliness, while we have to search hard for a clean finished (most places in Indian cities do look half-finished) part in Indian cities, it’s much more difficult to find a dirty place in a city in other parts of the world, not merely Eur...

I recently sent this post in a group on the subject of purity of Hindi, which so many of us mistakenly support...... No spoken language can be purified artificially. In and around Delhi, a spoken form started emerging some eight hundred years ago, developing basically on the Khadi Boli. The Grammar remained inherently akin to Khadi Boli (retaining the distorted words from Sanskrit which already existed);  words from Persian, Arabic and Turkic languages kept getting assimilated. This spoken language was variously called Rekhta, Hindi, Urdu, Hindustani etc.   There was no such individual language as Hindi in eighteenth century of Meer Taqi Meer, when the language started getting literary inputs. (the languages of Tulsi and Sur are taught as Hindi today but these were basically Avadhi and Braj.  Khadi Boli, by the way,  did not have a strong literary tradition and Braj was the language of choice for lettered people) Later, with the advent ...