Those were the days: Minimum Hindi!

As I negotiated the peak hour traffic in Bangalore this morning the Music Jockey (MJ) from the FM channel playing on the car radio was saying  “Usko dehkte hi mein bezuban ho haya, kyunki weh itni ugly  thi” . There is a programme on the channel titled “Prithvi(MJ) ko hindi kyon nahin athi” in which Prithvi has to form a sentence with a word texted to him by the listeners…She or He whose word was used in the sentence broadcast got some goodies from the sponsor. As you guessed the word to be used in the sentence was ‘bezuban’. This reminded me of my tryst with hindi which started in school and has now taken me to enjoy Hindustani / urudu gazals, shayari and some simple poetry. Along the way my troops taught me Punjabi.

In the 1960s Kerala was not as averse to Hindi as was the state of Madras (Now Tamil Nadu, since 1969). In school I had to learn a third language, the second being Malayalam, which by selection was Hindi – Sanskrit and French were the other options. This third language was something which was there but could be ignored with impunity as the subject language was not part of the final papers for the board exam. This sublime situation did not take many of us beyond the alphabets of the language. So when I was called up for the SSB in 1969, I went in for Hindi tuitions aiming to master the spoken language. It was neither enjoyable nor beneficial. The lady had only a slightly better knowledge of the language than I had. At least I knew the first two lines of all hindi movie songs played out on the Binaca geetmala by Ameen Sayani. I also knew some intricate words like sartaj et al. In the event Hindi was not required in SSB and initially in NDA as well wher I duly joined the Lower Hindi class whose status was no better than my third language in school. But unknowingly I began to pick up the language conversing with you all in the four years we were together. During my training once when on leave I was visiting relatives in Tamil Nadu I visited a chemist for some medicines. I explained my requirement but elicited only a stare him. I repeated my request with same result. It was then he told me in Tamil that all the while I was talking in Hindi a word of which he did not grasp.

When I was told in Talbehat in 1975 that I had to pass an exam in Hindi (Minimum Hindi) I was surprised but prepared. While posted in Darbuk in 1975, I had the unit Education NCO come and teach me the Urudu alphabets. Punjabi surprisingly came naturally to me while I commanded Sikh troops in my Battery.

Now probably Hindi has become my second language with Punjabi and Urudu taking fifth and sixth places.