Mind your Language

I am an Indian and my mother tongue is Hindi. Hindi is also our official language, English is the second official language. Constitution of India recognizes no national language, which is appropriate because there are way too many regional languages (Tamil, Bengali, Marathi, Punjabi etc.). If you are a foreigner and you think learning Hindi will help you have a proper conversation in South then you are sadly mistaken. Not like Southies don't understand Hindi, they just refuse to speak it.
In my house we speak Hindi (or Hindi-Urdu to be accurate) in Andamani dialect, it's not much different but it has its own flair. It certainly is not the purest form of Hindi but I don't know who speaks like that anyway.
My mother is a mainlander and my dad is an islander, they both have their own way of speaking Hindi. Mine I would say is a mix of both style and not to forget I went to a English medium school, so I speak Hinglish, like many other people of my generation.

The funny thing is, I am more comfortable speaking English sometimes, maybe it's because I live in England now. But surely I can't put it above my mother tongue? Or can I?
I passed school with A grade in Hindi and B in English. So I guess my Hindi is better.

But grades have no significance in real life.

Today I went to get my eyes checked. They had one of those things that you read from a distance to check your vision. It had four sides, one was English alphabets another was assortments of animals, third was different signs and fourth was Hindi alphabets. I always read the English one but the problem is that I have had a lot of eye check ups and I have pretty much memorised the English one. So this time I had to choose something else.

I sat down on a stool and looked straight. There they were, Hindi alphabets arranged randomly. I stared at it for sometime and I just couldn't get it. I knew what they were but they seemed alien to me somehow. Like it was not the language I speak everyday at home. I said I'm not comfortable with Hindi so I'll read the signs. After trying different numbers, we came to the conclusion that the glasses I am using now is fine.

So I sat there with my 6/6 vision thinking why I didn't want to read Hindi. Is it some kind of self-hate? But it wasn't, because I didn't feel that I don't like Hindi. I like it, it's just complicated.  I have to think a lot while reading it. I don't read Hindi subtitles on TV because they go away in seconds before I can figure out what was written, I only read it if it's romanized. I don't watch Hindi news because I feel I have to concentrate to figure out those big complicated Hindi words they use. But I have no problem watching Hindi sitcoms as they are a more lighter version of Hindi, there are no heavy duty words there.

I thought of other things too. Like how I can only count till 20 in Hindi. How shameful is that? I got a A grade for the same language. And this was not like billion years ago, it's only been four years. Were the teachers really happy the day the marked me? Were they drunk? Did they have really good sex or their favourite cricket team won the match or something? They seem to be very generous with their grades.
Or maybe it's just me. Maybe I gave English an upper hand because I write in English. And really the last time I wrote more than two words in Hindi was four years ago.

I wonder if my kids will have more trouble with Hindi. I live in a multi-cultural country now so I guess I can have babies with anyone. There are good chances that my kids can be bi-racial. They would probably never write a word of Hindi, unless I want them to. But do I actually give a fuck? That is the real question.