Saturday, July 23, 2011

Zabaan Sambhal Ke

Ramesh is an ordinary middle class child with ordinary middle class values and ordinary middle class sensibilities. Ramesh goes to a local school and leads a very peaceful life with his parents. Ramesh’s parents are not educated and run a small shop that just saves them from falling into ‘lower’ income group.

Scene 1:

Ramesh gets an opportunity to visit a big IT MNC. Ramesh’s parents were always fascinated by the professional looking, fluent English speaking employees of such MNCs and wished that he gets a job in one of the MNCs when he grows up.

Ramesh enters the office and attends the guided tour. He is amazed at the infrastructure. He thinks he is ‘living’ the movies he saw on Doordarshan. He is awestruck at the fluency in which they spoke English. However, he gets separated from the group. He feels like being in a maze which looks similar in all directions. While trying to get his way out, he gets the slice of the lives of IT professionals.

He hears a man addressing his female colleague as a female dog. He hears a professionally dressed girl laughing and exclaiming at the coitus. As he makes his way through the maze, he sees a man near a coffee vending machine. His facial expression said that he was drinking some really bad tasting drink. However, Ramesh was surprised to hear him say that the coffee drank instead of he drinking the coffee. He sees the symbol of a staircase and walks towards it. On the way, he finds a suited employee asking his colleague to copulate off. He finally reaches the staircase where he finds his group.

Being a reserved person that Ramesh is, he didn’t share his experience in detail with his family.

In the night, after a long day's work, Ramesh’s father urges him to be like the IT professionals he visited that day

Scene 2:

It’s 7:00 am and the mercury reads 40. Ramesh’s father is dropping him to school. He is taking his usual route which passes through a slum. Ramesh sees two women fighting for a bucket of water. The communication which is in Hindi is decorated with expletives. The women did not forget to bring the relatives of the other in the conversation and gave creative adjectives to them. Ramesh was observing the fight with curiosity. Ramesh’s father pulled him and increased his speed. A few steps ahead, a group of children from the slum were playing cricket. While playing, what appeared out of camaraderie, the children referred (in Hindi) to things related to the biological process of reproduction. Ramesh was again listening to them.

Ramesh’s father briskly walks past the slum. He tells Ramesh that people from good families don’t talk in such a language. Only people from slums do so. He urges Ramesh to not be like them.

Ramesh is left confused.


PS: I wanted to write this post a couple of weeks back but was thinking of how to write it without using the actual expletives. Hope, I was able to convey the thought without the use of any 'such' words.

12 comments:

Saru Singhal July 23, 2011 at 6:05 AM  

Message well conveyed without the use of 'such' words.

Anonymous July 24, 2011 at 12:11 AM  

:) i completely agree that "such" words have become too common in the corp jungle...
1)i think ppl don't actually mean what they say most of the times..i don't disagree that they actually mean what they say at times and not hurt others
2) People tend to use them just to show off and they think it is "cool" to use "such" words
3)people want to "socialize" and don't want to be treated as aliens..
....anyway people are better off using "such" words...no??? :)

Sridhar Iyer July 24, 2011 at 9:29 AM  

Dressing well and speaking fluent English doesn't make us civilized... Character is what makes us civilized not our dress....

Awesomely written..

Prashant Mehta July 24, 2011 at 2:09 PM  

Saru Singhal ji
Great!

Anonymous ji
1. Agreed. People don't mean what they say. Most people don't even know the meaning of the words to really mean it.
2. Perhaps. Unfortunately.
3. Perhaps again :)

I don't know whether they are better off or not. It's just an observation from a middle class child perspective

Sridhar Iyer
Agreed. Thanks!

Anonymous July 24, 2011 at 3:39 PM  

@ Prashant mehta

Well, i think one does evaluate what one forgoes to get some thing when one adapt to any change ...and one does need to read between the lines about my point on better off...:)

Swati Kaul July 25, 2011 at 6:20 PM  

Good one. reminds me of our lunches at MS

Prashant Mehta July 27, 2011 at 11:26 PM  

Anonymous ji
Yes. One does evaluate.

Swati Kaul ji
Oh yes.. totally :)

Swati Kaul August 2, 2011 at 7:07 PM  

Whats with the Ji

Anonymous August 4, 2011 at 9:23 AM  

What did you intend to say through the post?

Mithun August 11, 2011 at 1:38 PM  

Moral of the story is education does not strictly teach people not to use "such" words.. It just strictly teaches to use them in fluent english.. :D

Namrata Mahalingam August 17, 2011 at 12:35 PM  

It's our upbringing which defines our character. Well narrated Prashant Mehta ji!

Prashant Mehta August 18, 2011 at 2:01 AM  

Swati Kaul ji
"ji" is my way to convey my respect to my readers.

Anonymous ji
It's open to interpretations!

Mithun ji
Well put! Exactly my thoughts!!

Namrata Mahalingam ji
Thanks! Agreed. Upbringing is, by far, the most defining factor of our character

  © Blogger template 'A Click Apart' by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008

Back to TOP