Lit Chic!

Growing up in Delhi and as a student of Lady Irwin School and then Miranda House and the Delhi School of Economics, Garg devoured Hindi literature, but was as comfortable 8216;8216;reading English, Urdu, Bengali and French, besides acting in English plays8217;8217;. And although Garg8217;s first published piece was in English for a leading women8217;s magazine, she says she knew even while writing it that she would not be using English on a regular basis.

Clearly, for this generation of writers, Hindi was not infra dig and the conflict between Macaulay and the masses a non-issue. 8216;8216;We belong to the second generation of Indian women to get educated and find a voice,8217;8217; says bilingual writer Sunita Jain, 62, trying to put the subject in perspective. 8216;8216;There were about 20 women writing in Hindi around the 8217;60s and 8217;70s. They were writing not just poetry, like the women of pre-Independence India, but also were looking at other forms, like novels and plays, in search of a larger canvas.8217;8217; And to express that newfound voice, Hindi was the natural, logical choice.

Though there were no political pressures on younger writers, Geetanjali Shri, 45, and this year8217;s Sahitya Akademi award winner Alka Saraogi, 43, claim they have never felt awkward or embarrassed about their choice. 8216;8216;But it8217;s true, people did expect me to write in English and there was a time when I did try to do so,8217;8217; says Shri, who was convent-educated in Mainpuri, UP. 8216;8216;But English just does not have the same connotations that Hindi does for me. It is in the process of writing that I realise I have more Hindi in me than I8217;m aware of. I use words and sentences without knowing their exact meaning, and when I check with the dictionary, I find my usage has been correct.8217;8217;

Similarly, Saraogi, who grew up in Kolkata on a diet of Leon Uris and P G Wodehouse, believes Hindi chose her long before she chose Hindi. 8216;8216;You express yourself best in the mother tongue,8217;8217; says the author of Kalikatha: Via Bypass, who did her doctorate in Hindi. 8216;8216;Your priorities change when you are writing in English.8217;8217; That could apply to a number of writers. Equally at home with both languages, Garg and Shri prefer to use English for their academic papers and issue-based pieces. 8216;8216;But it8217;s not a question of writing in one language because we8217;re better at it, we have to retrieve and re-learn it,8217;8217; emphasises Shri. Explains Garg, 8216;8216;When you use a language creatively, you enrich it each day. If you don8217;t use it enough, you become hesitant.8217;8217;

Ask Jain, she8217;s been there and done that. The author of novels like Boujyoo and Bindu spent 15 years in the US after her marriage. 8216;8216;Though I was already writing in Hindi, in the US I did my Masters and doctorate in English. Reading, writing and teaching in English created a parallel creative track, and I started writing poetry in English. But I noticed I was losing touch with Hindi. So I left my family in America and moved back to India, and consciously returned to writing in Hindi, though I have eight anthologies of poetry in English.8217;8217;

For all four, the language of the soul, so to speak, has always been Hindi. Yet they believe their comfort level with English has helped them develop a bi-lingual approach to their creative work, so much so that they prefer translating their own writings. 8216;8216;My novel Kalikatha: Via Bypass has a multilingual approach, as you can see in the title itself,8217;8217; says Saraogi.

Simultaneously, they acknowledge losing out on the global readership that the likes of Vikram Seth or Arundhati Roy call their own. 8216;8216;I could have been living with my family, earned more fame,8217;8217; says Jain, a trifle wistfully. But for these women the 8216;8216;what ifs8230;8217;8217; are obviously of less significance than the pleasure of writing in the language of their choice.