Today, September 14, India celebrates Hindi Divas, marking the day in 1949 when Hindi was declared an official language of Independent India. My mother tongue is Telugu, and although I was introduced to Hindi in school, I never became fluent in speaking or writing it. The fault doesn’t lie with my teachers—my struggle has always been with learning languages. This limitation shows up even in my own mother tongue when I try to use it at an advanced level. English was once a similar hurdle, but living for seventeen years in an English-speaking country and using it extensively for work made me far more comfortable with English—ironically, even more than with Telugu.
Languages are best learned by living them, not just studying them. Until a year ago, I had never lived in a Hindi-speaking region, so the gap I had as a student lingered on. Telugu, a Dravidian language, is worlds apart from the Indo-European family that includes Hindi and English. The vocabulary, grammar, and structure feel alien. Thanks to Sanskrit influence, Hindi vocabulary is a little less foreign to a Telugu speaker than English—but Hindi introduces something entirely new: gendered grammar. Every inanimate object is assigned gender, unlike in Telugu or English. I found this as frustrating in Hindi as I once did in French: to my ears, giving gender to lifeless objects is both amusing and bewildering.
Learning Hindi in school meant memorising some grammar and names from literature, but little real practice. Most of my learning came through television and film. Serials like Hum Log and Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi on Doordarshan helped our whole family pick up conversational Hindi. Epic series such as Ramayan, Mahabharat, and Bharat Ek Khoj gave me a taste of both modern and classical forms. Later, while living in Madras and then the US, my only exposure was Hindi cinema. By then, I could follow most spoken Hindi, even if the declining quality of films dampened my interest.
Music, however, anchored me. My father and grandfather loved old Hindi songs, and I inherited their obsession. I credit All India Radio’s evening programs like Chhaya Geet for keeping me sane during my JEE preparation. Even now, I listen to Hindi music more than Telugu—whether folk, Hindustani classical, qawwali, or ghazals. Telugu music often leans only on fresh film tunes or Carnatic classical, while Hindi’s breadth has kept me hooked. I still miss some meanings in the lyrics, but that hasn’t dulled my love for the sound of the language.
Growing up in Hyderabad, my need for Hindi was limited to short exchanges with auto drivers or shopkeepers—barely a line or two. Everything changed when I moved to Dehradun a year ago. English remained the work language, but outside, Hindi was unavoidable. Within months, I could read the script more fluently and converse with locals. With ChatGPT’s help, I even began writing poetry in Hindi to impress friends. It feels like using a calculator: I know the emotion I want to express in English, I understand enough Hindi to check, and the AI bridges the gap into rhyme and rhythm. Now in Rajasthan, I’m eager to train my ear to the rustic dialects—Mewari, Marwari, and more.
I have long been a student of linguistic history, especially of Indian languages. A person’s linguistic identity is as fundamental as DNA—something both politicians and linguists often forget. Living in the North, I realized how rich and neglected the so-called “dialects” are. The three-language formula was followed by southern and eastern states, but in the Hindi heartland, variety within Hindi itself is overlooked. The line between a language and a dialect is always blurry. Many of these regional tongues are as old as Sanskrit, while standardized Hindi is only a few centuries old. Yet their speakers often treat them as “inferior Hindi.”
Language, like culture, is never static—it evolves with neighbors, technology, and time. I am not a purist wishing to preserve some “perfect” form, but I do believe in cherishing the local, whether it’s a dialect or a tradition. India’s true strength lies in its diversity, and I hope its dialectical richness endures. Personally, I aim to learn at least a few features of Rajasthani dialects. Who knows—perhaps by the next Hindi Divas, I’ll be confident enough to write a piece like this directly in Hindi.