Hi! So we don't meet as frequently as we did. But I think it's better to meet when I have anything to say rather than saying something because I have to. Compulsion is a killer. It does things to one's psyche that one cannot even begin to imagine. It drains away all the joy and makes for tedium. But you'll agree there's a vast difference between saying something because you have to (weekly or monthly column) and saying it because you really want to.
What I'm looking at today is the way language has been used down the ages. The main purpose of language is to communicate. It originated in sounds before it was built into the complex network that it is today.
The classics we read show us that language was not only a means to an end but an end in itself. There was a time when authors took as much pleasure in fashioning ornate sentences, painting characters in words and sentences which ran to four or more pages. Each description was exhaustive detailed and riddled with similes and metaphors. They took as much joy in writing out these exhaustive descriptions as the reader took pleasure in reading them. For instance our own Tagore. To my shame I must confess that I cannot read Bengali fluently (having learnt it only because Assamese was compulsory in school). So my mother read it aloud to me as a child. Hearing excerpts from Khudito Pashan ( the Hungry Stone) I had a hard time understanding most of what I heard. It had little or no resemblance to Bengali as we speak it or hear it. It was not till Sarat Chandra Chatterjee that we come to a phase where language became more comprehensible and the language of the common man. I don't know much about Bengali Literature. My only purpose in citing these references was my memory of that afternoon when I began to comprehend the role that language played in determining its readership. Even Shakespeare despite his universal appeal has us reaching for a dictionary or a glossary ever so often. There are still writers who hark back to tradition taking immense pleasure in language itself. It is not a mere tool for them to convey; a vehicle to convey their ideas but an end in itself. They take as much pleasure in crafting sentences in playing with words, thinking of new ways to string sentences as they do in determining the plot and character.
I must confess as I grow older I lean towards plainer prose, use fewer words. Use language as a tool rather than an end. Of course I still remember the pleasure I got from using new words, big ornate sentences as a child. It made me feel so important. Now as I read my childhood pieces I'm not ashamed of them, no, because they have something I lack today- a freshness of perspective, a novelty, lack of jadedness but I would change the medium of expression to a much plainer pared down version of the former.
The new generation is impatient. Give them a convoluted exhaustive description and you are sure to be interrupted: But what do you want to say dude? They will ask you. And I must say I find myself echoing the same impatience sometimes reading pages and pages of sentences saying nothing much. Get to the point, I find myself saying. Which coming from a literature student is considerably myopic and reprehensible. Because language is a thing of beauty forever, to misquote Keats.
Today the English language has several versions- English, American, Indian to mention the ones I'm acquainted with. Now English writers still use what we term "good" language as compared to their American counterparts who are decidedly more colloquial. It is largely thanks to Americans that we now have words spelled the way they are pronounced- the "aes" knocked off to "es" the "ou"knocked off to "o" and a profusion of slang. They made the language functional. The English prose is far more formal less colloquial. Indian English has incorporated its own changes to the language. Read Chetan Bhagat who uses the quintessential language of the new generation Indian.
But since language is meant to communicate, as long as the author fulfills this purpose adequately I'd say all's well that ends well. Right?
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