Gender Wonder

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The earlier Post: Pen & Wink has generated considerable cogitation & agitation about the assignation of genders to words (or is it the other way round?)

I thoroughly enjoyed the Comments of Pratik & the Don.

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During the 1950s the nascent Nehru-led Government of India went pro-active about a Constitutional Provision that in due course (15 years?) Chaste Hindi should become compulsory all over India or some such coercive proposition.

From my rich experience of 68 years, I realize that coercion never works in any sphere of life; everything takes its own sweet time to mature, fructify and sweetly stabilize.

Like a mango left on its mother-tree to ripen by itself has an altogether heavenlier taste than one plucked and ripened artificially by physical and organic chemistry.

There was a revolt that almost threatened to tear up (or down?) the fabric of the nation. DMK in Tamilnadu reaped rich electoral harvests on this plank. It went boycotting and defacing Hindi wherever it was found. Bengal too was not very kind to the imposition of something as 'popular' as language.

Even an amiable kid like me rebelled when it came to Test Cricket (those decades of West Indies-Australia dominance with legendary names like Worrell & Sobers and the Chappell brothers). Since All-India Radio was a National Monopoly, some wise guy in Delhi decided that it will have 15 minutes of English and 15 of Hindi Commentary interspersed and alternating (instead of separate channels for Hindi & English); and we poor crazy fools (who knew next to nothing about either Cricket or Hindi) didn't have the expensive receiver sets to catch BBC.

RKN wrote a couple of charming pieces on the Hindi Enthusiast. The Policy withered away, but surprisingly Hindi became popular all over the South because of Hindi Movies and a quiet thing called Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha which conducted Distance Education followed by Exams, Certificates, Diplomas and Degrees in the Hindi Language. Cute things called Pradhamik, Madhyamik, Praveshik, Visharad, Praveen, were bywords particularly among home-bound girls and women.

And of course this globalization thing worked wonders: For four decades and more it was a punishment for me to go to Madras where many of my relatives were staying. Right from the Porters in the Central Station, Rickshawalas, Bus Conductors to Hoteliers, none would speak any lingo except Tamil.

But in 2004 when I went there, I was surprised that everyone from Coolies onwards were responding to Hindi enthusiastically.

Reason: Software Boom and a large imported population of 'rich' geeks, nerds and My Fair North Indian Girls in Jeans & Tops and strange hairdos..

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Anyway. Hindi WAS a Compulsory Subject for us in our Schools in the early 1950s; only, the Pass Mark was just 15% (later, it was Compulsory but no 'Pass' required; much later it became 'Additional Optional'; and even later abolished altogether).

We had Hindi Pundits teaching us Hindi. I am sure Pundits are the worst teachers of a Foreign Language. I attended German (twice) and Russian (twice). In each case the Pundit was the most repellent; but My Fair Russian Lady, Scherbakova, who didn't know any English at all was my Best Foreign Language Teacher..a foreign tongue should be made INTERESTING.

The trend has caught on in English too: Gone are the days of Wren & Martin English Grammar: I know several careers killed by it. Ishani now learns her English by watching lovely videos of Nursery Rhymes: "Two li'l dickey birds..."

Anyway, I was not only repelled by my khaddar-clad Hindi Pundit who would dictate on and on and ask us to mug up the 7 or more Past Tenses and the 4 or more Rules for the 'ne-pratyay'. And the worst was this gender issue: I could never master it because it had no rhyme or reason (Bengali was such a relief because it is gender-insensitive I think).

My U.P. Friend Tyagi tried to help me out at IIT KGP by some fallacious 'Rules' such as: "small things are feminine in gender even when the wearer is masculine; and big things (or was it thighs?) masculine even if they beautify their feminine wearers":

e.g.: 'mooch' (small mustache) is feminine whereas 'sthan' (voluptuous breast) is masculine.

Less provocatively: 'kitab' is feminine while 'granth' is masculine.

I gave up because I was a student of Relativity...

Later on I was told the Rule: it is the 'word' that has the gender: sweet-sounding words are feminine and vice versa.

Well: 'loko bhinna ruchihi"..sweet and sour are again relative.

It is best to give up on Rules like Markownikoff's Rule in Organic Chemistry which I am told has so many more Exceptions than the Rule itself that a brand-new Rule was invented: "Anti-Markownikoff's Rule" (which had even more exceptions...God Bless Organic Chemistry!...my son's favorite subject).

And the obvious neuters like table and chair (however inviting) having 'genders'.

I am told that in the now-dead Classical Languages like Sanskrit (Latin & Greek?) it was the wicked Poets who insisted on strict prosody and wanted to play with double and triple meanings that needed genders for nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions and 'connectors' (as our bright-eyed Don cutely puts them) because their interplay decides which one belongs to what in the so-called 'messed-up' Poetic Order..I don't know Sanskrit (nor Greek nor Latin).

Over to the Linguists!:

.....but I love Hyderabadi 'Khachra Urdu' and the 'Rummy Telugu' spoken by the D-i-L of our Marwari nukkad Shop-Owner (it is the speaker who makes the lingo sweet or sour).




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