A part of my Bosco Legacy was a certain snobbery over the impeccable Queens’ English that was ingrained in us from the very beginning. So much so that even today I shudder when I see colour spelt as color and whenever that happens, the MS Office on my work station/ laptop changes the language to English (U.K). As time goes by, often the good things in life get eroded. A part of the responsibility was my own, having failed as the School Captain to ensure a complete ban on vernacular while in school. A classic case of Rule Keepers being Rule Breakers. If there is one rule in school that I have broken it was this one and sometimes it does feel bad.
Then Pilani happened and the Ra and Da gained into the language that I spoke. Indian English was slowly gaining entry pushing the colonial legacy aside. The transformation was complete at IIMB. The language of business world over was English, but be it in Bangalore or Singapore, the local dialect of English was the flavour of the season and though the written language or the board room language remained more or less acceptable to the standards we set for ourselves in school, the spoken language was infiltrated with Guss, chuck, poda, whatda, light teesko, strong max.
The last hope of redemption was the corporate world. There was a hope that we would go back to the times when we spoke proper Queens. But while in Bihar, you speak in Hindi or even Bhojpuri. As I was speaking to Vishy, lost somewhere in Rural Maharashtra, I was shocked to realize that even the last hope was a lost hope. These days we speak about market share “degrowing”. In school we would have said the market is shrinking. And so tonight I write the epitaph of the Queens’ I once knew.
Then Pilani happened and the Ra and Da gained into the language that I spoke. Indian English was slowly gaining entry pushing the colonial legacy aside. The transformation was complete at IIMB. The language of business world over was English, but be it in Bangalore or Singapore, the local dialect of English was the flavour of the season and though the written language or the board room language remained more or less acceptable to the standards we set for ourselves in school, the spoken language was infiltrated with Guss, chuck, poda, whatda, light teesko, strong max.
The last hope of redemption was the corporate world. There was a hope that we would go back to the times when we spoke proper Queens. But while in Bihar, you speak in Hindi or even Bhojpuri. As I was speaking to Vishy, lost somewhere in Rural Maharashtra, I was shocked to realize that even the last hope was a lost hope. These days we speak about market share “degrowing”. In school we would have said the market is shrinking. And so tonight I write the epitaph of the Queens’ I once knew.
2 comments:
macha trust me, communication is about everything but language these days (except in those still kickass corporate circles :D )...
here in saudi i go to a rig... and in a situation where u're surrounded by twelve chinamen waiting for instructions, the hands, eyes and the body has ten times more work to do that the mouth! :D
ur epitaph has come at a good time! :)
I Have nothing to stay but that I bow. We should have had non verbal communication course in BITS along with repwri. :-)
Post a Comment