Friday, April 06, 2007

Mother Tongue, Kid's Babble & Emoticons

We all are supposed to communicate, but each one of us, somehow picks up a style to do that and stick on to it as dear life and don’t know whether the one on other side even understand what we communicate. There are a few things that happened in the last week or even slightly even before and this post has been jumping inside my head demanding & begging release.

I don’t know what is it with me. I am utmost comfortable with a language that is not really my mother tongue. I am good in my mother tongue also, but when it comes to speaking I invariably choose English. I read in both languages, Tamizh & English, but if I need fluency in communicating my thoughts I jump over to English. People tease me that, I keep repeating the same words in Tamizh, having a looonnggg preamble, but invariably say some stuff that does not mean anything. And I quickly jump over to English and continue the conversation and feel like I had been pulled out of deep waters and I can really feel oxygen in my lungs.

Some say that it depends on which language you think, but what I think is that, it also depends on the subject that you want to talk. My daughter and me are extremely comfortable with each other in Tamizh and my Madurai dialect.

But I am absolutely angry about something that happened 3 days back ( don’t ask me what’s new in that ). At I was at the receiving end and at the other end was a Patna dealer. He called me in my mobile after 9 PM and I don’t entertain that because there is no problem in my business that can’t wait till the next day. The business itself is in one state that however hard we try we cannot screw it up further, so we have stopped attempting. Now this Patna guy has urgency. Leave his impropriety of calling at that time; this joker had no sense in him that he spoke with me in Hindi, a language I don’t understand. I tried telling him that if he expects me to solve his problem, he needs to make me understand that on first place. He had the audacity to then tell me, why are you in Senior Management if you don’t know Hindi. X-(

You should have imagined my anger by now. But I was fairly composed comparing to my standards because he was a business partner. I didn’t even ask him how come he does business, if he is such a stupid ***hole. I didn’t tell him that Tamizh as a language has thrived for more than 5000 years and it is one of the classical languages and the only one that is spoken even today. No use telling these nuts about the glory of the language, when they don’t know what it means by 'seat reservation' in trains, coming from a state like that. I simply started replying to him in Tamizh and the conversation had to stop eventually. And don’t ask me what I did to the dealer later. This is not about power abuse; this is about recording my indignation.

Now it is another story communicating with my 5-year-old daughter. She has this swing-sang tone to her speech. For that matter, all kids do. This girl has completed her Annual Concert ( don’t call it annual day, OK? ) some 3 weeks back. But I am yet to hear the full composition of her team. Whenever I ask her, she starts, Naaanu, Saaambhhhaaavi, Saaaaaadna, Tejas, Ddddeeeevvv …… I don’t know how on earth a 3 letter name takes 3 weeks to be told, but its true. In this she will also miss out a name, then start all over again. I am determined to get the team members correctly before the next annual concert and I have applied some 2 weeks leave for that. Take her to Shimla, slowly get one name a day and complete the team somehow.

And then the sms!! My friends tell me that I write better or talk even better when it is sms. One of my guys has warned me that my future is at stake, because I use my fingers so much to type that the fingerprints will disappear and I cant find out what will happen in my life. Without sms, I somehow can’t talk. I guess I send messages to people inside the same room. I wonder how I am still talking with my wife, when she has a number for herself. And in sms, my use of emoticons.

I think Yahoo killed my mother tongue, and has made these symbols, Characters as the main words in my dictionary. I find it very difficult to have a normal face to face talk with someone because emoticons are not available. Or atleast cant be used, but for a few ones! Just imagine standing in front of a girl talking with her and suddenly putting your tongue out. They will think you have gone bonkers ( which they will eventually anyway think, but why do you want to advance it yourself ). In sms, all you have to do is type :p , ain’t it easy? Or can you really allow spit flowing through the corner of your lips. Hello, it is extremely good-natured and it means drooling, which is what you do anyway. But an emoticon can easily help you in that, which a talk can’t.

And now I have made my friends addicted to these emoticons, that if I receive a sms without the ‘tongue out’, I start getting seriously worried whether she is suffering some dreaded disease that has afflicted her for some 10 seconds. And breathe easy when the next one has an emoticon in it.

Anyway, I sometimes really don’t know whether with all these compulsions one has a conversation at all. But who cares? Action Counts, isn’t it ?! ;)

1 comment:

krithi said...

Hilarious. Esply the part abt taking leave to find out team names.QUite aningenious excuse. Lemme copy that:P Don't tell anyone abt it:P