Did I know Hindi?

When I got married I joined my husband who was working in a city in the north. As we were taught only our mother tongue Tamil and English in the school, the few words in Hindi I did know were all picked up from the Hindi films I had watched. (When I was in sixth standard, the anti-Hindi agitation came to a head and our Hindi classes stopped. Our Hindi Pandit was designated as the new moral science teacher as she had been made redundant by the new rule banning Hindi from schools!)

Around the time I was in high school, English films were banned in India (along with Coca Cola etc.,) and so, even the small towns we lived in during the course of my father's transfers through Tamilnadu, started screening blockbuster Hindi movies like Bobby and Aradhana. From these movies we picked up a smattering of Hindi words. Well, I knew 'acha' meant 'good', 'aavo' meant 'come' and all the other 'kuthe kaminey and neechey' were swear words uttered by the distressed towards the villains and were of no use for day-to-day use in my new life.

My parents, little sister, uncle and aunt came to settle me in my new home. The shopping seemed very easy to me as my Mom and Aunt managed to buy things after pointing at the things they needed for cooking during the week they stayed with us. Even my little sister managed to get curry leaves from the corner vegetable vendor by herself! I thought it was no big deal that I didn't know Hindi as I could very well manage with English. Alas! Little did I know that the vegetable seller, the newspaper boy, the electrician, the old newspaper buyer, the milkman- in short, all the persons we come into contact with in our daily life- knew very few words in English! My people left on a Saturday and the next day being a Sunday my husband took me to a movie and the market. I was very much impressed by the fluent Hindi he spoke to the shopkeepers and despaired what I could do all alone in the house when he went to work!

Before leaving for work the next day, a Monday, my husband wrote these words in a note:

'Sahib ab ghar mein nahii. Baadh mein aavo. Shaam che baje ke badh!' (Sir not at home now. Come later. After 6 pm).

I was to memorise these words and recite them any person who rang the doorbell during the course of the day. I told these words to the ruddywalah who, seeing the hitherto locked-during the daytime-house being occupied- came to see if there were old newspapers for disposal. I managed to get along just fine with these words and English. People were ready to oblige the new bride the banker had brought from down South and tried to understand what I wanted to say, from the accompanying gestures. Being mostly Marathis they were amazed to find a person who knew neither Marathi nor Hindi and gave me pitying looks which made me feel very dumb.

I learnt most of my basic Hindi words from the maid servant and brushed it up from the 'Learn Hindi from English' book my husband owned from his college days where he studied Hindi as a second language. I showed her all the groceries and asked her to teach me the Hindi equivalent of each item. She used to tell me the names both in Hindi and Marathi but I had to choose one language at a time and I thought that hindi being the national language might come in handy even if we got transferred out of Maharashtra and so, concentrated on the Hindi words. When I went to buy vegetables and fruits, I asked the friendly lady at the shop the Hindi names of each item and learnt them too. She also taught me the Hindi names of numbers, right from 1,2,3... and 10,20,30..... I learnt fast so much so that I could manage most shopping and money transactions with my rudimentary Hindi knowledge.

I found out that the street vendors who sold onions potatoes and tomatoes on wheeled carts selling at much lower prices than the shop and ventured out to call them from the balcony and started buying these items from them. One day I could see a man and woman team selling something in a covered basket and voicing some word whose meaning I couldn't make out. Smitten by curiosity, I called out from the balcony to stop them and went to see what they were selling, some kind of fruits....?

They spoke something in Marathi (or Hindi?) which I couldn't understand but I gestured them to open the basket. They opened and out came a cobra, hissing and flashing its forked tongue! Imagine my shock! It turned out that the day was Nag Panchami on which day it was very auspicious to worship snakes in Maharashtra and these villagers were giving doorstep service to the women in the city, earning extra money from this unique once a year business opportunity!