Oh, the joys of being a multi-linguist!

I am sure most Indians who have gone through high school are well versed in at least three languages - English, a regional language and Hindi - the national language. In case of people residing outside their native state, one could add the mother tongue to this list as well. When I say well versed I mean speak, read and write in at least one and at least speak or read in the other two.
I have mentioned that I speak English, Hindi, Marathi and my mother tongue in Malayalam for good measure in this post. I am sure there are many such stories out there.
What are the not so obvious advantages of multi-linguism?
On the lighter side, I would say would be that I can watch a Bollywood masala movie and experience the typical euphoria that a good flick does without caring much for a true depiction of real life. However if I would like to watch a cold calculated, well researched and realistic movie that has a storyline worthy of a novel, I would go watch a Hollywood blockbuster. And I would undergo a totally different set of emotions for either one. It would be like a switch turning off on one set of perceptions and turning on another.
I am sure a monolingual person can never in his life experience that.
A more useful result would be one where a person would be wearing a different thinking hat each time he converses, reads or writes in a different language.
When one converses in English, he would tend to be formal, business like and professional - the language of the work culture. In a regional language one would switch to a more rustic ambience and try to share the bond of the local language. In Hindi one would be speaking the lingua franca that binds all of us together as the most understood language pan-nation. In one's mother tongue, like how this video parodies, he would be striking a bond that relates to nativity, a bond among Indians that binds better than any other. Not only this, when one speak in any of these languages, he would actually become part of that culture, transforming himself for that moment to a representative of that culture.
Any more ideas out there?

The Joy Of 'R' and 'R' without the agony of the third 'R'

As a young child, I had a lot of reading material available. I gorged on every written word, from the child's magical world of Enid Blyton (I pronounced her Gnid Blyton those days coz of the strange way she signed her name and also thought she was a man), to adult stuff such as "The Blitz" and "The Illustrated Weekly" (then edited by the venerable Khushwant Singh - now defunct). The Phantom and Mandrake comics in The Times of India were a daily treat. I even remember my father trying to explain the wit behind the "I don't know Son!" cartoon series that appeared in the Blitz but it didn't make much sense to me at that time.
Spurred on by these wonderful writings and the magical world they created, I too was induced to try my hand at writing. I wrote a notebook full of stuff about a hero who was much like Tarzan except that he had a wife called Viola (my father suggested me that name when I bugged him to name the heroine of my story - Viola is a tropical flower and my father being a Post Graduate in Botany what better name could he suggest?). For my youngest brother who was seven years younger than me, I created a fictional character called "Supremo" who had a lot of magical powers at his behest and was more powerful than Mandrake and Phantom put together.
Another interesting thing I remember doing was writing general knowlege tests for my younger brother and our unsuspecting friend, Shishir, who was our neighbour as well as classmate. After that, like a real life teacher I would correct the answer papers and assign grades, till one day both my "subjects" got fed up of it and that was that.
We read Enid Blyton, Dr. Dolittle, Freddie and Flossie and then graduated to Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books. I remember carrying a load of books as high as my head from the school library to my home during the summer vacations.
Once the school librarian decided that he would not issue books on summer holidays. But we snubbed him by approaching the school principal who gave us special permission to get books issued from the school library, holiday or not.
So enchanted was I with mysteries that once I begged my father to give me a mystery to solve. Non plussed he told me he had lost a bunch of keys, could I solve that mystery? Going by the book, I asked him to give me for some clues. When none came, I decided it was not much of a mystery after all.
Asterix and Tintin comics were such a glorious treat(as it is still now), that every time I re-read one, I found something I had missed in an earlier reading.
All this took place in my early primary school years.
As I passed on to higher classes, my interests shifted to encyclopedia, science books - especially the "Understanding Science" Series.
But I whipped up a masterpiece just before my final Secondary School Board Exams. I wrote a short story about two teenagers who solve the mystery of their kidnapped professor by alien forces. The story was printed in the childrens's section of a popular Central Indian magazine in serial form and I would have won instant fame, if just half the adults/ children who resided in our housing colony read magazines/ books.
In later years I was reduced to writing just an occasional letter to the editor of local newspapers. Now, after discovering blogging I find the a new found joy in penning all the mundane thoughts that come to my mind.

Babel Fish

I am going to start this post with a joke.
A man and wife with a small kid walked into a store and started talking to each other. To everybody around it sounded worse than gobbledygook.
One person in the crowd was a bit intrigued and asked the man, "I never heard that language anywhere. What language do you speak?"
The man pointed to himself and said, "I am Chinese. So I talk to my kid here in Chinese!" And then pointing to his lady companion, he went on,"This is my wife. She is Czech and she talks to our kid in Czech! And we both, husband and wife, talk to each other in English, coz that's the only language both of us understand!"
"Thats really strange!", exclaimed the third person. "Communication in your family must be a riddle!"
To this the Chinese gentleman smiled and said, "Yes, we call it Chinese Checkers(pardon the pun)!!"
Well reality is not always far behind fiction.
Coz we speak 3 different languages in our home. All the time!
It all started when our father was posted to a remote public school in the sugar belt of Western Maharahstra, when we were still small kids.
The local children knew only Marathi(yes, not even Hindi!) and our only way of communicating with them was through that language, which was even on our curriculum.
We picked up the language and were soon able to speak the language fluently.
Later as we grew up, we moved to Eastern Maharashtra, were the locals speak a kind of pidgin Hindi. We picked up that as well and adapted it as our mode of communication between us brothers. Our parents communicated with us in English, we answered back in Hindi and they themselves spoke to each other in our native Malayalam, which we understood very well, but did not speak or write.
Even when we grew up things did not change.
We brothers still speak to each other and our parents in hybrid Hindi with English words thrown in for good measure. Our parents speak to us in English with lots of Hindi words, while they still talk to each other in Malayalam, which we can grasp as well!
Wondering how all that silent interpretation and translation goes on in our heads?

They flash upon that inward eye

Long back in primary school, we students of a rather inspiring English Teacher, let me call him Mr.A, were instructed to learn by rote classical poetry of days long gone by. We did this dutifully and sometimes the words were so stuck up in the back or our minds that we even mumbled them when asleep, so our parents joked.
Until one day I questioned this teacher's wisdom of rote learning.
"What use is learning-poetry-by-heart", I asked. "Its not going to supplement our knowledge in any way!"
At this point Mr. A's eyes turned grave.
And then his eyes shining bright, he said, "Boy, you know, once you are out of school, out of college, out of university, the one thing that you will remember long after you have forgotten the theories of Einstein and complex mathematical equations, will be these poems you have learnt. And even if you do remember a lot of the stuff that you did learn, the only one thing that is going to give you pleasure right to your old age will be these poems and you will look back at them in an enlightened way."
Pondering over the wisdom of Mr. A's words now, I guess he was right. I might find the theoretical stuff of science and maths, I learnt back in the school days useful in some aspsects at certain moments of my life, but the poetry I learnt has given me pleasure and a blissful kind of satisfaction at times both high and low.
And sometimes I find myself subconsciously wording Wordsworth's line "They flash upon that inward eye....which is the bliss of solitude.." And I smile to myself at the truth in Mr. A's words.
Yes, even when I grow old I shall remember those soothing ,calming words of classical poetry and appreciate the gift it is to mankind.