Shake off your linguistic shackles, save Hindi

Hindi, our mother tongue and our national language, is dying a slow death. It is losing its importance in fast-changing modern India. It is getting limited to speaking and verbal communication. Today, people prefer reading English newspapers, watching news in English and reading more of English literature than Hindi.

Hindi can be made more popular and given its due importance, but the initiative has to be taken by us. We, perhaps, have forgotten that India is the land that has produced great Hindi novelists and poets like Munshi Premchand, Mahadevi Verma, Harivansh Rai Bachchan, and many more, but today’s generation has forgotten these names and is deviating towards Western authors like Stephanie Meyer, PG Wodehouse, Eric Segal, etc.

Students should be encouraged in schools to read Hindi literature. Hindi should be made a compulsory subject up to class XII. Students can be provided with Hindi newspapers about once a week. To make Hindi popular, novels read by the youth – such as those by Chetan Bhagat – can be translated in Hindi to make the language more popular.

Full report here Indian Express

Tavern of the soul: A son tiptoes in

Sometimes a single event tells you everything about a person, and so it was, earlier this summer. Amitabh Bachchan recited his father Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s poetry at the Theatre des Champs-élysées, in Paris. Correction, he not only recited, he sang, he translated and told stories that set up the context of the poems. It is important to discern that he was not grandiose, not pompous and not contemptuous of the doubtful comprehension of the audience. He thought nothing of breaking a poem’s rhythm (sacrilege, I think) to translate it into English, with unselfconscious ease. He was clearly there to communicate, not to join ranks with connoisseurs to affirm his compatibility with them.

Amitabh kept it simple. It was a simplicity that begs a hermeneutic process, because it is devoid of oversight with an abundance of circumspection. True art says the unsaid, and touches a tiny nerve that has been pinching in your subconscious. It takes the mundane, strips away cliche concepts and turns it into something extraordinary, making you wonder: how did I miss this? Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s poetry is that.

On the morning of his performance, on June 13, Amitabh was sharing a table with his wife, Jaya, and two ladies who were probably helping organise the show. He was wearing grey sweatpants and a sweatshirt, perhaps with sneakers. One of these ladies asked Amitabh, “What are you wearing for the performance?” Possibly bristling at the patronising question, the great actor answered, “I will go in what I am wearing now.” His wife Jaya chimed in, deadpan, “Yes, he will wear what he is in now.” That evening, as the show opened to applause, Amitabh walked on to the stage in an irreproachable black, knee-length achkan, and cream, softly-creased, well, it’s hard to call it a salwar or churidar pyjama or trousers. It could best be described as what Armani would do, if he were to make a pyjama/salwar. Why mention this? His attention to detail.

Full report here Outlook

Amitabh Bachchan concerned about father’s works

Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan says he is alarmed at the way his late father Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s literary work is being exploited by the electronic media for commercial gain.

‘…as I sit in my room after the days acts, I study the media coverage on the electronic and am alarmed at how they cut paste my Father’s recitation to suit the drift of a story they may be designing,’ Big B posted on his blog.

One of the most renowned Hindi poets of the 20th century, Harivansh Rai’s works include Madhushala and Agneepath.

‘Scant respect for the decorated and most invaluable works of literature, only because there is no knowledge of what my father’s works mean or a deep anguish against them as they begin to exploit the moment for their commercial gain. The culture respect and order that literature so deserves, gone ‘to fetch oil’,’ wrote the 67-year-old.

Full report here Calcuttatube