The Joy of Doing Things Badly: Adventures in Hindi

Another big change in moving from Hyderabad to Delhi is the language of daily life. It has become cliche to say that India is made up of individual countries, but it many ways, it certainly feels that way. There are 18 official languages, and individual states are free to decide their own language for administration and education. The Indian census goes further to say that there are 114 languages with more than 10,000 speakers; while the Ethnologue Report estimates that there are 850 languages in daily use in India.

So it is no surprise that Hyderabad (in the south) speaks a different language than the capital city of Delhi. During my first few weeks in Hyderabad, I traded Telugu lessons for French lessons. My teacher (who did not wear shoes even though we met at a coffee shop in the mall) liked to say that Telugu is the "Italian of the east." In a way, I could see what he meant. There's something lyrical about Telugu. At the same time, it always reminded me of blowing bubbles. A colleague who moved to Hyderabad from Delhi (and doesn't speak any Telugu) says that he often just adds "alloo" or "wadamaloo" to Hindi words and it comes close enough to Telugu. Case in point: Danyavad (or, thank you, in Hindi) becomes danyavadamaloo in Telugu. I remember both my eagerness to learn Telugu and my disappointment my first day in Hyderabad: "Six syllables to say thank you?!"

I never did make it past the basics of Telugu: telling a mother at LifeSpring that her baby is beautiful; directions for an autowalla to take me home...

So I've resolved in my last year in India to learn Hindi enough to be conversational (above a 7-year old ability, which is where my Tagalog is). And I've learned a secret: the joy of doing things badly! Last year when I first started Hindi lessons, I barely used Hindi outside the classroom, cognizant that I would surely mess up. For a recovering perfectionist like myself, putting yourself out there before something is absolutely perfect is a difficult task.

But with the joy of doing things badly, who cares if you mess up? It reminds me of a New Yorker article I read about dealing with decision paralysis. The author now knows she will choose badly at a restaurant, so instead of internally debating, she just chooses right away and is done with it. It's a lot less stressful and also more fun.

I actually think part of the reason auto drivers are now being so nice to me is that they see the effort I'm putting into Hindi. Either they're impressed and use the meter instead of citing an outrageous sum, or they're amused and do the same.

Besides getting closer to the culture on a day-to-day level, learning Hindi also presents a unique insight into the Indian mind. First, there are the superficial differences. In India, one "drinks" cigarettes and "best friends" are called "special friends." But then, there are deeper ones as well. There is no word for "weekend" (many companies work Saturdays). My personal favorite revolves around time. Whereas time is linear in the west, it is circular in India. Perhaps this stems from the Hindu concept of reincarnation. People go through rebirth and rebirth, in a way that bends time to be circular. Case in point: in Hindi, the word for "yesterday" is also the same word as "tomorrow" (kal). "The day before yesterday" and "the day after tomorrow" are again the same word: parson.

In Dreaming in Hindi, the author writes something that rings especially true:

"The delight of defamiliarization is one of the genuine pleasures of languaging. Forcing yourself back to the start, finding names again for everything, requires you to look at everything fresh: sky, dirt, air, your feet. In bhram, in the sweet illusion you get without words, nothing in the world can remain what it was. Nothing can possibly stay ordinary."

And with that, back to my Hindi flashcards...