Friday, February 13, 2015

Lost in translation or Ignorance?

Recently, a friend of mine came to me and narrated an incident which is a commonality in today's Bengaluru. At the end of his narration, he insisted I write a post which might influence the corporate big-wigs to devote their time in this regard and also for the many ignorant folks. I almost fell on the floor laughing when he said, my blog post might have an influence.

I address this friend of mine as "Mr Chloromint", cause he always has questions about anything and everything. Armed with his inquisitive mind, he has troubled a lot of people including our common boss to whom we report. There have been countless instances in our brief acquaintance of when his inquisitive mind has benefited and back-fired. Nevertheless, his enthusiasm for questioning remains solid. 

Mr Cholormint stays in the northern part of bangalore, while the office is abour 30 kms away which in Bangalore's standards is a two hour journey, with hiccups like silk board and madivala junction in the way. It was yet another day for Mr Chloromint. He boarded the usual bus, the bus would ferry him from Silk board all the way upto Bommasandra stop where our office is located. Amidst all the faces in the bus that day, there was a peculiar face that boarded the bus. He looked like a man from the state of Bihar. His understanding of Kannada was as good as a Beyonce's understanding of Mandarin. The conductor started telling people to buy tickets, unfortunately for this bloke, he went about shouting in Kannnda. His lack of knowledge in Kannada proved disastrous a few moments later. The bus went a few yards from the stop he got on and voila! two blokes stopped the bus and got into it. Who were these guys?? the ticket checkers. The ticket checkers began their job of hunting down the passengers who hadn't bought a ticket and this Bihari dude admitted that he indeed hadn't bought a ticket. At this moment, the ticket checkers demanded a fine, while this bloke kept on telling that he got into the bus the previous stop and reiterated that he couldn't buy a ticket cause he didn't understand the language. While the former spoke in Kannada the latter spoke in Hindi. There was a deadlock between kannada and hindi, it was more like a battle between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal but in different dimensions. The deadlock continued for a while and also infuriated the crowd. The agony was so high that one elderly person came and hit this Bihar lad and the lad reciprocated by giving back another blow. By now, the bus had passed the stop where the lad had to get down. The crowd was steaming with anger and people were all shouting and abusing this lad who was also abusing and shouting in Hindi. There was a verbal duel where both the parties didn't have an iota of understanding of each other's words. Just when things were about to go from bad to worse, Mr Chloromint intervened and mediated between the parties. He told the Bihari lad that he had to pay a fine since he hadn't taken a ticket, for which the Bihar lad said he had only a hundred bucks. Mr Chloromint then told the ticket checkers to leave the dude by collecting the hundred bucks. Both the parties agreed and the Bihar chap got down about four stops away from the stop he intended to get down, while Mr Chloromint also got down at the same stop which happened to be Bommasandra. 

Amidst all the chaos, came a thought in the mind of Mr Chlormint, what if this Bihar chap knew kannada, there wouldn't have been a slight chance of this chaos happening. The man wouldn't have been humiliated in public and the crowd in the bus wouldn't have been enraged. 

This brings us to the crux of the problem, why then are people ignorant in learning the local language, it's not mandatory to settle in a state, but it's for their convenience. The fundamental reason on why an individual has to learn the local language is survival. It gives an instant access to everything around, after all you connect with other human beings only through a language. I would say that the responsibility of learning the language lies not only with the individual but also with the organisation he is working for. There is a rule in Germany for students to get a visa is they should they should be proficient in understanding the basics of  language. 

While there shouldn't be an imposition of any such rule, there should certainly be an insistence for the same. 

After all as the great Rumi once said, “Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.” 

This is Vattam signing off!!

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