Delhi (25 page)

Most striking is the case of Hindi and Urdu. The two languages began almost as one: both were birthed from the same Delhi dialect. Here it is obligatory to point out that Urdu is a cognate of ‘horde', and its name came from the Muslim occupiers'
ordu
, camp.

They share syntax and many everyday words of bazaar chat (though not some of the most commonplace, like days of the week or family relations). My first teacher was a very kind and devout Pakistani woman with big feline eyes. She spoke Urdu, but was perfectly at home chatting with her Hindi-speaking friends on the phone. Yet she could not read Hindi: the two languages' scripts are totally different. Urdu has the sensuous
nastaliq
gliding from right to left, a fluid Persian-Arabic calligraphy liberally scattered with dots. Hindi instead uses the Devanagari script, which looks like the laundry of a big-boned family: thick square sleeves, starched collars and blocky socks, all dangling from the washing line in familiar left to right fashion.

This difference in scripts is more than a historical inconvenience. It's toxic. The twin languages have as bloody a history as the twin countries they are most associated with, India and Pakistan. From the nineteenth century the battle between the two became bound up with the nationalist movement. English was understandably rejected as the future language of independence. Instead Gandhi called for a happy marriage of Hindi and Urdu, ‘Hindustani', although he paid little attention to the key question of actually writing it down. But as Hindu-Muslim strife grew, Hindi increasingly became associated with Hindus and Urdu with Muslims. With the country's partition in 1947, the two languages were bloodily wrenched apart.

Outside the bazaar, Hindi and Urdu increasingly diverge. They look to different symbolic worlds. Highbrow Hindi draws upon Sanskrit, venerable ancient language of the Hindu scriptures, for its vocabulary (such as the replacement of ‘toilet' with the wonderful
shauchalaya
, ‘abode of cleanliness', echoing the porcelain-white ‘abode of the snow' of the Himalayas). Highbrow Urdu instead looks west to the Islamic world, deploying increasing numbers of Persian and Arabic words. Today's upmarket registers, found in literature and official media and the speech of the pretentious and/or hyperreligious, can be almost mutually unintelligible. They are most different in the words with most resonance: dignity, reason, hope.

In the first years of independent India many of Bollywood's great lyricists were Muslim. Urdu could be found tucked in the corners of film posters (hand-painted) and in the mouths of on-screen princelings and courtesans; many of its Persian loanwords remain Bollywood standards. But now Urdu has been pushed to the fringes, conspicuous only in the great former centres of Mughal culture like Lucknow, Agra and Old Delhi. Hindu-Muslim violence broke out when Uttar Pradesh, the gigantic state that includes Delhi's eastern suburbs, made Urdu its second official language in 1989. Bollywood today prefers dabs of Mumbai
tapori
slang in its Hindi, and Punjabi for its bumbling Sikh stereotypes. The language has been ghettoized like much of India's Muslim population.

There is another linguistic valve to let off pressure, one much favoured by contemporary Bollywood. India has a second countrywide official language besides Hindi, a lukewarm compromise which was to have been phased out in the 1960s but instead expanded like a virus: English.

‘To the Bahai Lotus Temple.' The auto driver nodded, and coaxed the engine to life. We zipped past a sluggardly truck with its ornately hand-painted ‘HORN OK PLEASE'. The roadside sprouted with adverts for English classes. The driver was humming a Bollywood ‘item number' (low on plot value but high on bosom-thrusting raunch, an ‘item' originally being Bombay
filmi
slang for an attractive young lady) in a pretty plausible falsetto. ‘Am too sexy for you…'

He paused his crooning for second to ask a question: ‘Madam,
yahaan se
left, no?'

English isn't just visible in Delhi. It's
everywhere
. Part of this is technological. People SMS or email using pragmatic English transliterations of Hindi words. Part of it is social. Once upon a time India's language of high culture was Sanskrit, later Persian. Now English has become the language of aspiration.

We stopped at the traffic lights on Africa Avenue. The auto driver turned off his engine and resumed cleaning out his ear with his little fingernail, lovingly sculpted into a long ear shovel. (As further evidence of personal transformation, my earwax seemed to change texture in Delhi too, from candle to turmeric.)

A trader materialized next to me, brandishing a sheaf of cellophane-clad magazines with a vaguely piratical air. His eyes gleamed like coins. ‘You want magazine? Very good magazine.'

More English. He flashed news magazines,
Business Today
, jowly industry magazines, women's magazines: Indian editions of
Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Grazia
. Some whitened celebrity gave me a sharky smile from the glossy cover. My auto driver eyed her with interest, humming under his breath: ‘Am too sexy for you…
_'

India might just be the one big place where the internet has yet to vanquish the power of print. At a time when British and American newspapers are closing, India's continue to grow. It boasts more paid-for papers than any other country, aided by rising literacy rates and insanely cheap prices—though they are consequently very dependent on advertisers and backers with deep pockets. The
Times of India
is already the world's largest-circulation English-language newspaper. Regional-language papers are growing even more quickly.

‘No, madam?' The trader shrugged his face, and flashed one final set. Beneath the cellophane were what I first took to be golden mangos. No: they were several giant pairs of Caucasian breasts, as comforting and pneumatic as airbags.

The auto driver started the engine again with a couple of gasoline coughs. I shot the trader a feminist glare as we whined off into the city.

Several lung-pummelling minutes later, we arrived at the Lotus Temple, a glorious set of white swan's wings rising in a southeastern suburb. It looks something like the Sydney Opera House, something like the mediaeval European pictures of six-winged, bodiless angelic seraphim—actually, it looks quite a lot like a lotus when I think about it.

Despite being persecuted across the Islamic world, the Bahai faith welcomes all of humanity and its religions as spiritually united. The temple is a popular local destination, and crowds throng its walkways and blue pools. The queue and access is controlled by guides who all seemed to be American gap year kids, combining earnestness and military precision. But inside the vaulted space is wonderfully tranquil.

It was there at the temple that I suddenly realized I'd forgotten how to speak English—or at least British English. Gesturing towards the shoe storage hut with a pair of leopard-print pumps, I said brightly, ‘Shall I do the needful?'

It had finally happened: like Rudyard, my mind had been Kippled by the effort to look towards two countries at once. Kipling went from a boyhood of dreaming in Hindustani to high priest of imperialism. I went the other way. I went native.

The phrase wasn't Hindi, but it wasn't exactly English either—at least, not the English spoken in Oxford or New York circa 2013. This was a whole new beast: Indian English—or ‘Hinglish', as it's somewhat pejoratively known. It is evolving at high speed and in different directions like some precocious elephant-headed toddler. After all, we've all got to adapt to these days of globalization, when we're all packed into the same crammed world cities. We've all got to learn the art of give-and-take, a little reciprocal
lena-dena. Thoda
adjust
kar lo
, my friend.

Hinglish is a language for all occasions. Let me leap to some ill-informed and over-hasty conclusions for you. Here is my short guide, though it's probably already out of date.

Are you trying to sell something?
Better use English. It suggests class and trustworthiness—so you'll buy booze from the ‘English wine shop', ‘English drugs' from the chemists, and biscuits advertised by depressingly white-skinned people laughing about dogs. There is even a terrible cheese variant—a country of cow-lovers obsessed with dairy products, and yet the main non-cooking option is strange rubbery stuff, like tofu in a cuboid condom—rather insultingly named ‘Britannia'. Sure, the Brits might have sneakily partitioned the subcontinent and carried out the odd massacre and forced famine, but they're just so lovable when they look up at you with their big wet overbred eyes, unlike your sly bobble-headed countrymen—and you can be sure the products are safely made in Guangzhou.

e.g
. ‘Coca Cola …
yehi hai
right choice baby!'

If you're selling yourself, consider mixing it up. Remember that Hindi is a ‘magpie language', and has been picking the pockets of unassuming others for their diamonds and rust for quite some time. Luckily this means that it is now très romantique, with many different words for love: the standard
pyaar
or
prem
, the romantic Persian-Urdu
muhabbat
and passionate
ishq
, the mother-love
mamta
, the Sanskritic
sneh
—though Bollywood scripts today are just as likely to say ‘I love you'.

Hindi is also full of repetition and rhyming-chiming, a feature made famous by Salman Rushdie's ‘writing shiting'. For emphasis, broken can be
toota-phoota
, quiet
chupchap
, upside-down
ulta-pulta
and (my favourite) naked
nanga-panga
. Ergo, it is a language made for wooing via the amorous medium of limericks and film songs.

On the other hand, just as the auto driver had realized, English has provided three words whose glorious lyricism is recognized all over the world: ‘sex', ‘sexy' and ‘fuck'.

e.g. ‘Zara zara
touch me, touch me!'

And if no English phrase covers the concept you're trying to sell… invent a new one!

e.g
. ‘Don't take tension—try latest timepass. Search the matrimonials: Girl, 26, Traditional with Modern Outlook, convent-educated, foreign-returned, homely, wheatish complexion, seeks suitable boy, caste and creed no bar.'

Do you want to sound posh and authoritative?
If in doubt, go for the Queen's English. By queen, of course I mean Victoria; Elizabeth II really has cheapened the lingo with her ridiculous txtspk and constant gangsta namechecking.

e.g
. ‘Piffle and poppycock. Kindly do not pluck or pilfer the flowers outside our bogey and that laundry-cum-guard carriage, or any such tomfoolery. I must bathe.'

You may also consider arbitrarily capitalizing some of the nouns in your writing to give an air of gravitas. The only problem is that British English does not contain enough registers of formality. Hindi has three words for ‘you', from the respectful
aap
, to the chummy
tum
, and the intimate, rude or Bollywood
tu
. Fortunately you can customize English to permit this.

e.g. Business email 1:
‘Dear esteemed Professor, I would like to felicitate you on the Publication of your cogitations on today's Culture of boredom …'

Business email 2:
‘k thx for rply Professor. C U there:) tc… bye'.

Are you trying to count?
Go English. India's much-celebrated invention of zero becomes understandable when you try to master Hindi numbers, as freakishly difficult as learning to poach eggs. It is astonishing that the country has produced so many great mathematicians. Perhaps it's the algebraic practice provided by abbreviations. These are everywhere, making everyday conversation a cross between alphabet soup and cryptography.

Are you hanging out with relatives?
Family ties are incredibly important and only Hindi can capture the specificities of your relationships. There appear to be hundreds of variations of uncle and others. You can affectionately extend respect by calling non-relatives ‘Uncle', ‘Auntie', and
didi
(older sister); even certain popular politicians are blessed with this honour. The word
bhaiyya
(brother) has a strange power to wheedle and coax—try extending it into a long bleat in auto negotiations—though it's also a Dilliwalla's insult for migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. And be careful: if an attractive young man calls you a
behenji
(sister), you should probably revisit your fashion choices. If he calls you ‘Auntie', with a respectful tip of his coiffed cockscomb, you might as well pack up the knitting needles and head for a nunnery.

One other word is crucial for these family encounters:
bas
. Enough. Please, no more food.

Do you want to sound modern and go-getting?
You have two options:

(1) Spice up that Queen's English with some sexy businessisms. They may be the aesthetic equivalent of bludgeoning to death a Corgi, but hey, that's capitalism. Maybe throw in some acronyms for that corporate
je ne sais quoi
.