Teenage English

(Having analysed my previous post, I realized I have glorified teenagers a little too much...of course, I do not wish to take back anything I have said, but I think I should devote this blog to what's wrong with teenagers. We also have some drawbacks...we cannot be perfect.)

Here is the sort of conversation you might come across if you dropped by a college these days.
“ Hey, waadiiupp, dude?”
“Nothin’, everything’s groovy,”
“Whacha doin’ man?”
“Nothin, chillin,’”
“Awesome, Where’s MJ and gang?”
“Dey were hangin at that funky and totally hapenning mall and hoggin’ some chips, like, whatever, man, who knows? They were, like, bunkin’ class, you know, like, dey were bugged to the core, chem.was totally freakish today, so Dey took a break and decided to hang!”
“What’s she do in chem?’
“You bunked class too?”
“Me bunked class, mate ”
“Cool! She did aldehydes and ketones,”
“The What-sits?”
“Some boring organic stuff dude, chill, don’t go cracking,”
“Was she mad, da?”
“Totally Burnin’!”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,”
“She’s such a bull-crusher!”
“Totally,”
“Alrigh’ buddy, gottago, me mom’ll toast me if I don’t turn up! Catchya!”
“Adios, Amigo!”
“Hastalavista!”
Now, if you understood half of that conversation, very good, it means you are fully updated with the modern trends of English Langauge, if you haven’t, you are someone like me, who prefers not to understand at all, because it hardly makes sense. The present day youth are largely responsible for brutally disfiguring the English Language. Seriously, I thought my grammar was bad! English, firstly, is not English because teenagers mix it with Kannada, Malayali, Spanish, French, American English or anything that sounds barbaric to the tongue. What is most irritating and common habit among school children is adding a ‘da’ at the end of every sentence! I’m not trying to degrade any language, but English is rapidly deteriorating into a mass of misspelled words and utter gibberish, and people change it according to their fancy. The funny thing is deteriorating English has become a necessity among us! Inferior English is ‘cool’ to put in the right terms. They try to associate even the language with fashion, new words are ‘in’ and others are ‘out’. For me, it’s illogical and highly nonsensical, and I have to make a deliberate effort to ignore slangs, because I have the fear my writing will decay with them, if I catch up to it. What a pity! Shakesphere would have drowned himself if he was alive!

Another annoying habit is to use shrt frms (short forms) every other day, which is more common with the girls. The ‘SMS’ language is creeping into daily usage.
“I’ll be back, A.S.A.P.” (as soon as possible) and "OMG OMG OMG!" (Oh my gosh!) somehow annoy me. Drooling with words too, like “Coooooooool!” is most common. And whenever you don’t find the right words, just insert ‘whatever’ or ‘like’ and it makes a fabulous sentence, filling in all the blanks! Words like ‘snazzy’ ‘hip-hop’ ‘chic’ have replaced ‘different’ ‘nice’ and ‘fashionable’. If you speak like this,
“It was such a nice day, yesterday, that I decided to have a long walk, and I took some cream biscuits along, just to munch along the way. And then there was such a cool breeze, I was happy, and contented,” people would stare and think you are exotic, because only a few speak like that anymore. That would translate into something like this in the ‘teenage’ English:
“ It was a cool day yesterday, man, so, I like, decided to chill, and I chucked myself out, got somethin’ to hog on, and de wing was like, whatever, you know? Made me feel sort of gud,”
If this continues, I fear the entire world would be divided into normal and abnormal English speakers, and in the course of literary evolution, who knows? This might become a new language(although a primitive and an inferior one, no doubt)and we might require a translator in the future! Teenagers, are you listening?

Bargaining

Having studied two years in the US, I am often faced with the question what I missed most when I studied there. There are many things I missed—the food, the culture and lots more. Prominently, I missed seeing my mom bargaining at the stores. Bargaining, I have realized, is one of those essential parts of Indian living. It is more like a habit, a hobby to some, and that urge to get things at a cheaper price always exists in every Indian heart. Even if you get your vegetables at an admirably low rate, it is difficult to quietly pay up. We would like to prod the poor vendor even more, trying to get our onions at a lower price. I think bargaining is an art, because everyone cannot be good at it. I am terrible when it comes to bargaining, but the older ladies of the city, through years of experience have become adept in it. The philosophy they follow is that every vendor can be forced to lower his prices. Nobody is too tough to crack. There are many types of Bargainers—the vigorous bargainers, the persistent bargainers and the clever Bargainers. I have observed one very clever bargaining technique: (My mom uses this)
“How much is the price of potato?” you ask.
“Blah-Blah-Blah…” says Vendor so-and-so.
“Aha! That’s too much? Could you reduce the price to twenty-five rupees?’
“No, I really can’t.”
Then you bargain a lot; heave a long sigh and say, “Well, I can’t buy them! They are selling the same potatoes for twenty on Market road.” And then you smartly walk away (not too fast to be out of hearing range of the vendor, mind you!) and finally, a gruff voice from behind calls for you. “Alright madam! Alright! Twenty five it is!”

Well, walk into a supermarket or a mall and you will quickly understand that you need to be well-mannered. Visiting a supermarket demands many special things. For example, you can’t barge into a supermarket in that wrinkled sari of yours and a torn shopping bag. Oh no! All those well-bred creatures up there will stare at you. You strut between the Aisles, sweetly take a look at the ridiculously priced corn-flakes cereals, replace them in their position and walk away. There is no bargaining. Prices are fixed. Surely, all those daily bargainers will feel uncomfortable in such a situation. We have been bargaining since many years, if all those American supermarket chains like Walmart and Target do arrive in Bangalore, engulfing the local vendors, then it is no surprise that the old women and the bargaining lot will become uncomfortable and some may even curse these superstores under their breath! While we generally consider it as a convenience, the traditional ladies might end up feeling they were robbed of their right, and the art that they had developed over years of practice has been wasted.

Talent Unrecognized

My mother was driving past the 80 ft road today, and I observed one of those “commonplace” sights of city living. A small tent which was put up next to an open drain, clumsy rubber sheets and utensils, and a family lives there! An old man sitting outside by the street dust and city smoke, and he has a small piece of wood in his hand. The man looks meek, his body bent, like a person who has lost all enthusiasm. But inside that battered body lies a master craftsmen….if you observe closely, you can see a small set of hand crafted wooden articles, “totems” arranged out neatly in front of the humble “home.” I think that man sits there, come rain or shine, all day long, to sell his wooden articles. But who would want to squeeze out of the choking city traffic, find a place to park the vehicle and then buy his articles? Sadly, there are no buyers. I could see the craftsmanship of a real master, a true talent in the hands of this old, haggard man. I could see that even this poor man who lives in a street side home, had a unique talent, a gift, but he was finding it difficult to survive.

There is amazing talent hiding in every one of us. But unfortunately, the “talented” these days are recognized as jazz singers, famous actors and dance troupes. Some fail to see the talent in these silent street-side dwellers…we are their silent killers because we do not support them. If someone takes art as a profession, usually, they come to nothing. I think a little more effort is needed to promote the talented villagers, our country abounds in such craftsmen, and a lot more of support is needed to uplift them. We spend crores of rupees to visit Venice, Rome, Florence, Paris, England to view the talent of the ancient sculptures and painters, we take pictures in front of the Eiffel Tower and say that such great builders cannot be seen anywhere, but I think we are wasting our money.

Talent is living just down the road, near an open drain, or even in the quiet, isolated villas and towns of northern Karnataka. If we only recognize and popularize the Indian Handicraft industry a little more, we could be exporting such stuff at exotic rates, and people from all over the world are willing to pay. Then, perhaps, that poor street side dweller could find a little more happiness in life, and could live a decent living instead of sweating it out on hot summer days, we could give him respect for his talent, and an admiration of the skill that lies in the hands of this old man, a little praise that he surely deserves.