OUT OF CHAOS, ORDER

Following is an essay I wrote as part of a group report of our trip. It's a little longer than most blogs, and more formal in nature, so you might want to take it in small doses. I put a great god story at the end if you want to skip to that! BTW, I have posted lots of new pics, and here's the FLICR URL to take you to several sets: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39413808@N05/sets/72157621776442737/

“Every 10 kilometers in India the taste of water and the language changes.”
As we observed the daily verbal interactions of the Indian population, it became quickly apparent that languages are no exception to the complex plurality that is India. Because language is the transmitter of culture, what then does that say about India at large….are there many cultures, or one, or, the ultimate Indian conundrum, many AND one? In a country where the Urdu speaking (Muslim) population has more in common linguistically with its neighbor Pakistan than the rest of India, how does India remain united?
In an attempt to reach a conclusion, let us consider three pieces of the linguistic puzzle:
1. regional language diversity
2. Indian English, and
3. the paralinguistic
It is not an overstatement to say India has an unparalleled diversity in its linguistic identity. Hindi, the national language of India, is spoken by roughly half a billion people, but there are 23 official languages, and 1,600 dialects. We often saw signs written in 3 languages, people switching with great ease from their mother tongues to English to a third or fourth language, and a churches offering 5 masses daily: one in Hindi, one each in Tamil and Malayalam (in a neighborhood where many southern Indians settled), one in English, and one in Bengali, as a nod to the local language of the area. Schools we visited also reflect the nation’s intricacy linguistic tapestry, with some offering English as the medium of instruction, others beginning instruction in the local language, while still others offered dual language programs. Coming from a country that is still struggling with accepting the fact that it has a second language, I found this flexibility admirable.

The imminent question in response to all these languages is how do Indians who travel from region to region communicate with one another? Although India has legitimate complaints about several aspects of the British colonial rule and the missionaries in the south, they did offer one gift that has proved invaluable: English as a unifying force for the country. The fact that this incredibly diverse country has a common language appears to unite the country in a way other cultural aspects may not. The levels of English proficiency one hears from city to city and person to person vary, but in the places we traveled we found there was usually someone who spoke enough English to facilitate communication. Furthermore, because English is still the hegemon of languages, it seems a propitious choice as the national language of unity. Indeed, Dr. Assema Sinha of the University of Wisconsin listed the fact that India is an English speaking country as one of the main reasons the country has seen the dramatic economic growth rate of the last 15 years.
During our time here, I did some informal field work on the dialectical differences between American English and Indian English. I observed interesting variants at both the semantic and syntactic level. In addition to the troublesome v/w phonemic distinction, there is a use of the present progressive in Indian English that is not allowed in American English (“Some of you are having it!”), and the occasional lexical item that is amusing to American ears and recognizable as a British import (“I told him he would jolly well follow our rules…..”) I also observed several pronunciation differences and styles between the 2 Englishes that sometimes provided us an exercise in careful listening. Dr. Suresh, Chennai archeologist and local historian, describes the Indian way of thinking regarding accents as follows: “Indians can only understand each other if we speak very quickly. We enjoy the up and down of the sound. Because we learn English after our mother tongue, we mix things up a bit, and our accents are different by region, but nobody cares.”

As Professor Goswami of Delhi told us, there is no substitute for experience. As I did further field study on the particularly Indian paralinguistic phenomenon known to outsiders as the head bobble, that experience served to further confuse and amuse me. The head bobble, for those who haven’t had the pleasure of observing it, looks part like the person is wagging her/his head, part like they are tracing a graceful figure 8. It is a very agreeable head gesture, idiosyncratic in its use, and very difficult to decipher. I noticed early in our trip when I asked a question, I often received a response in the form of a head bobble. Was that a yes, or a no, or somewhere in between? Intrigued by the use of this paralinguistic phenomenon, I began to document its use. There was the obvious yes, and then no, and the uniquely Indian response, always accompanied by a head bobble: “I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter, everything’s fine.” I would get a head bobble when I asked “Is ___ possible?” or “Can I _______?” It was used to signal pleasure, agreement, emphatic agreement (more animated bobbling), deferment, acceptance to a proposition, encouragement, mild displeasure, and so much more. The head bobble unaccompanied by words can be well nigh impossible for the outsider to comprehend, which, in the end, I concluded may say a lot about the Indian polite response to impossible requests through deflection via inscrutability. It is yet another unifier for the country, as I observed during our travels many interactions where there were more head bobbles than words.

So what’s the conclusion? Does India more resemble the Tower of Babble or The United Nations without the simultaneous translations? Perhaps a little of both. To borrow the meaning of a symbol of India, the swastika, perhaps out of the (linguistic) chaos comes order.

For Hindu deity work, let’s turn to Kali. Kali, called the “Black One” is said to have shot from Durga’s forehead when the goddess was in a protective rage, so she takes the form of Durga at her most terrifying. (To me that seems a redundancy, but whatever.) She has four arms, a third red eye, and a belt made of human hands. In one hand she carries the head of a demon, in 2 others, her weapons of destruction -- a sickle and a sword. To complete the ensemble she wears a necklace made of skulls. She sends fairly clear visual messages regarding her fierceness level, doesn’t she? She is the goddess of time, although she’s often mistaken as the goddess of death because of her black and dark appearance (wonder why anyone would make that connection???) She is thought to end our illusions and free us from the cycle of karma by bring us liberation from our bodies. She is responsible for making sure that all things die in order to continue the cycle of life, but she also works part-time at making sure everyone gets the measles and mumps so their bodies can be stronger to fight other germs. Apparently she hadn’t heard of vaccinations.