The building guard rings my doorbell, armed with dire news: “Aapka cable cut karne ko ayaa hai.” Cable? But I have Tata Sky. I run down to investigate only to be confronted by an irate young man in khaki. “No cable! Electric, electric,” he growls, impatient at our misapprehension. We begin to argue, I in Tamil, he in Kannada, our voices rising in frustration, as the guard tries to make peace in Hindi. What I remember most clearly is the BESCOM fellow’s contempt for my inability to speak his language – a deficiency that damns me as an outsider.
Language is a marker of identity, but also difference, a truism that is easy to forget in the cosmopolitan confines of Bangalore. This is a multi-ethnic, multilingual city, more so over the past twenty years thanks to the IT boom. In ‘new’ Bangalore, Manipuri beauticians, Malayali nurses, Punjabi housewives, Tamil maids, and Andhra businessmen live cheek by jowl, expanding each other’s linguistic horizons. The Gujarati businessman at the vet’s clinic chats in Kannada with the assistant, drumming up some broken Tamil as he makes small talk with me. My maid, who arrived in the city as a young illiterate woman from Dharmapuri, has since added three languages – Kannada, Hindi, and English – to her skill set. “I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse,” averred the Spanish Emperor Charles V. The youngest generation of Bangaloreans are no less talented. “My child already speaks four languages,” is the boast I hear most often from other parents. Too bad I can’t say the same about mine.
Full report here Bangalore Mirror
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