The bindass lingo won146;t fade soon

Take Mumbai8217;s word for it-Bambaiyya Hindi is 8220;totally bindass8221;, never mind what Maharashtra Navnirman Sena did to establish Marathi8217;s supremacy.

City8217;s lingua franca is and will remain 8216;Bambaiyya Hindi8217;, which mirrors city8217;s cosmopolitan identity

Take Mumbai8217;s word for it-Bambaiyya Hindi is 8220;totally bindass8221;, never mind what Maharashtra Navnirman Sena did to establish Marathi8217;s supremacy. Bambaiyya Hindi8217;s cool disposition probably stems from the fact that it8217;s entrenched in the city8217;s cosmopolitan identity, and the confidence that nothing can unseat it as Mumbai8217;s lingua franca.

With its array of interesting, amusing and street-smart terms, it makes conversation easy and delightful. Devoid of any pretension or pressure of purity, it has come up with expressions like beedu, item, lukkha and panvati. Though they are drawn from languages like Marathi, English, Urdu, Telugu, Gujarati, Parsi, Bengali and others, finding their equivalents in other tongues is difficult. This is what makes the language of the city8217;s commoners8217; uncommon.

8220;Bambaiyya Hindi enjoys a creative space, not burdened with the notion of purity. It8217;s a very rich and ever-evolving language. This dynamism should be encouraged,8221; says professor Anjali Monteiro of Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

Wrapped in the story of Bambaiyya Hindi8217;s evolution is the history of the 200-year-old city8217;s formation and population. 8220;The metropolis has been open to migrants from across the country and outside as well as to their languages,8221; she says, insisting that such multi-cultural ethos is what makes Bombay.

Agrees Kamala Ganesh of Mumbai University, 8220;The city8217;s language is a very authentic representation of how it grew.8221;

With Hindi films like Ghulam and Munnabhai cashing in on Bambaiyya Hindi to bring out a delectable slice of Bombay, the language has also found patronage outside the island city. 8220;Maybe it has something to do with the language being entertaining and very sound-based,8221; says Swanand Kirkire, lyricist of Lage Raho Munnabhai. Its wide acceptability lies in its lack of rigidity, says Kirkire.

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Scholars feel the language should be celebrated, an idea Krsna Mehta and India Book House explored for the diary of 2009 as it highlighted Bambaiyya Hindi8217;s inherent humour.

Rita Kothari, a professor at Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad, too, vouches for its irreverent and comic tone. 8220;It8217;s fun to slip into such a tone which exudes attitude,8221; she says.

The study of this dynamic language, akin to Mauritian Creole, has fascinated Kothari, who is researching on 8220;Hinglish8221;. Though she is not sure whether this language should claim an official status, she is confident that Bambaiyya Hindi will continue to survive and evolve. Isn8217;t that true about the famed Mumbai spirit as well?