Mr Sharma, my Hindi teacher set the performance standards (particularly in Hindi exams) for me when he announced aloud in the class, “Very good, six and a half”, while handing out the term test’s answer papers.
I looked at him strangely. “Six and a half out of 20 was ‘very good’?”
“ Arre ! You are all not even native Hindi speakers. Very good, six and a half on 20,” he reaffirmed.
I am not a native speaker of English either. Ha! I was not a native speaker of history, geography, science and especially of Maths either. So ‘very good, six and a half’ to all of that too. Dhanyavadh-shukriya Mr Sharma, for the benchmark.
It is quite ridiculous that I had no Tamil (my native tongue) in the curriculum but had to study even social studies in Hindi, (imagine!) as it was a Central school! I could write a sentence like “The equator and the prime meridian signify 0 degrees latitude and 0 degrees longitude, respectively,” completely in Hindi before I turned 11 (whatte Hindi burden I carried). Also I was the official translator of the Saturday DD Hindi film for my awestruck grandmother, though now and again I did confuse baraat (groom’s procession) with barsaat (rain) and interpreted lawaris (orphan) as ‘one without heir’ and khudkushi (suicide) as self-happiness. Beyond my grandmother I have not been able to impress anyone with my bright Hindi luminosity. That regret got resolved when I found my son struggling with Hindi for his exams.
“Why fear when I am here,” I assured and questioned him from a Hindi poem.
“ Azad desh ke bachchen kya kya karenge ?” (What all will the children of independent India do?)”
“They will play FIFA on PSII and watch Ten Sports on TV. Which idiot chose Hindi as my second language?” he snapped.
“I did. Hindi is our national language. Hindi and English are languages of power. Know them and you can travel anywhere. If I speak to you in Hindi for one full month, before long you will be speaking too and then these lessons won’t seem so difficult,” I offered.
“What is in Hindi for ‘your ideas are dismal’?” he asked.
I ignored his frustrations and turned to paryayvachi shabdh (synonyms).
“Tell me the meaning of haath, saath ….” “and bath ?” he interrupted.
“It’s elephant, seven and cleaning oneself,” he answered.
“That would be hathi (elephant), saath is ‘alongwith’ and cleaning oneself is English bath for godsake,” I spat. “Now read aloud,” I commanded.
“ Hathiyon jungal mein rehte hain ...” he began and took an eternity to decode the simple sentence. This kid was not going to manage six and a half even out of 100 Oh! Sharma saaaaab ! Would they make him repeat class VI if he failed in one subject? Blasted Hindi, we south Indians never did cut edge with this language which had two different ways of saying tha and ga and pa. I fretted over my son’s Hindi handicap until I remembered the “ ek gaon mein ek kissan raghu thatha ” classic scene from a Tamil film, where the Hindi pundit desperately tries to correct the pronunciation of his student (who has his sights on the Pundit’s daughter). Try as he might, the student adamantly pronounces “ rehtha tha ” (was there) as “raghu thatha ” (Raghu’s grandfather).
“ Rehtha tha ,” screams the Hindi pundit.
“Raghu thatha ,” insists the student.
I howled with laughter. The more my son read aloud, the more I laughed. “So cruel, and you call yourself a mother?” my mom gritted her teeth.
“A situation is a situation, mother or not,” I laughed and completely relaxed after that. Luckily a friend’s grandmother, a retired Hindi professor, began teaching my son, (surely the “Raghu thatha ” scene would have replayed there?) and the kid actually passed in Hindi. Very good, six and a half!