For the longest time I was mocked by my cousins in Calcutta (apologize to the puritans, I like that name way better!) for butchering the language. Reason - An average sentence spoken by me would be, very inappropriately and very fairly, distributed between the three languages known - Bengali, English and Hindi. Our kin, devils that they were, would make me say every sentence thrice.."gawd...she's so funny'' they'd holler!
Cut two - Letters written in Bengali would arrive at all the important occasions from mamabari..and like a prompt illiterate, I would hand them over to ma, and wait for her to read them out to us. On my part, I would send return mails in English-illustrated-Bengali - giving my folks fodder for giggles, garnished with occasional awwwws.....Sunday afternoon regional movies on Doordarshan would be absolute nightmares with the impeccable shuddho bangla dialogues! It was bad enough that people wrote the script, could they at least not speak the 'normal' colloquial language?
And then the historic year- my sister's sixth grade -which would change things forever. As a part of her curriculum, she had to opt for a regional language, and anyone's guess that she would've chosen Bengali, since at every level she shared my sentiments about our haplessness. And therein began a basic bangla literacy drive. The alphabet was learnt, words were read and appreciated, and sentences constructed. And life in the Bengali-text-world was rosy like never before. Print was managed with slow reading, and a fair amount of intelligent guessing. Though handwriting comprehension was still a major challenge, a strange sense of triumph would prevail every time we read something, the disproportionate time-taken-to-read-it notwithstanding..
The casual fling with the Bengali script, however, did not progress to a lingering romance. Wish it had though.. everytime I pass the Golpo Shongroho in the book shelf, or cross the Kali Mondir library, I feel wistful.
Perhaps it's time to rekindle an old flame...
