To the Gangetic Plains...With Love

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“Akashavaani samskruta vaartaha shruyantham…” Alamelu gets up at six in the morning listening to a language she cannot quite comprehend. This sounds like the language she had heard recently on the television. She thought of the lady in a light blue saree with shoulder length straight hair, fair skinned, red lipped and gorgeous looking. She spoke a language unknown to Alamelu and always looked straight at her through the television. Alamelu liked both the lady as well as her blood coloured lipstick. How she wished she could own such a thing like lipstick and colour her lips all day! That seemed impossible to a place where she belonged- rustic and inconspicuous.

In the evening, she sat down to watch TV and the show was Chitrahaar. She was perplexed why TV shows are, by and large, in a language unknown to her. She questioned and her Amma replied , “This Hindi speaking people are very dominating, and our people at the station are afraid of them. Hence, these Hindies impose their language as well as their programmes on us even if we don’t understand those.”  Alamelu wondered how these beautiful looking Hindi people could do such a nasty thing. Although she despised this particular act of theirs, she began to realise that there is a pleasing rhythm and romance in their language. Gradually, she started to love the language and thought if she could ever speak Hindi like the gorgeous lady in light blue saree…

                                                     ******              ******

Shops burned and erected, thousands ran and flew, revolutions came and went: a national flag, a national anthem, a national song, a national tree, a national flower, a national animal, a national bird, a national fruit, national river and lately a national drink too but not a national language for the nation to own. As a young probationary officer of a State owned bank, Alamelu was delighted to travel across the length and breadth of the country in spite of her Amma’s apprehensions. For training, she was sent to a place in the Hindi Heartland where the three holy rivers merge… [ to be continued...]

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