English, Hindi, Hindustani... How Bollywood tackles language!

Hindi films today have a short shrift to the native dialogue delivery system. It's a sign of our times, but we do miss the beauty of old-style Hindustani

What's in a language? Plenty, it would seem, as Bollywood continues to grapple with the poignant question: why does English represent 'classy values' while Hindi and state-specific dialects are seen as outright 'downmarket'?
Recently, in the course of a week, two simultaneous releases, Hindi Medium and Half Girlfriend, addressed the issue of Hindi versus English. Quite clearly, Hindi Medium - directed by Saket Chaudhary and toplining Irrfan Khan and Pakistani actress Saba Qamar - did drive some valid points home. As for Half Girlfriend - adapted from a Chetan Bhagat novel and directed by Mohit Suri - it displayed a quarter-baked approach to the story of a boy (Arjun Kapoor) from Bihar, whose origin and argot are handicaps in the supposedly hyper-westernised ambience of a New Delhi campus - clumsily named St Steven's to allude to the hallowed St Stephen's College. Oh well!
Expectedly, the medium-budget Hindi Medium was garlanded with rave reviews. Half Girlfriend opened to brickbats. But there's no predicting the taste of the ticket-buying public at large: believe it or not, the Arjun Kapoor-Shraddha Kapoor romance fetched more-than-satisfactory results at the all-important box office. A side lesson to be learnt here: a blitzkrieg of lousy reviews doesn't necessarily affect a film's commercial fate. Of late, the ever-burgeoning phalanx of critics were believed to have the power to make or break a film. Didn't happen.
To return to the subject of the day, English, or even Hinglish (a polyglot of words comprising Hindi and English), have become trends that are an intrinsic part of movie dialogue. Few, if any, of the movie writers nowadays are well-versed in Hindustani, which once blended Hindi and Urdu to memorable effect. The last of the master Hindustani writers can be counted on one's fingertips - notably, Gulzar, Javed Akhtar and Javed Siddiqui, who show up on film's credit titles only once in a blue moon.
Before them, there has been a litany of legendary writers, who penned dialogue of the almost literary kind - the prime examples being Wajahat Mirza, Kamal Amrohi, Kaifi Azmi, Abrar Alvi and Rahi Masoom Raza. Of course, it would be futile to long for their kind of finesse and regard for grammar even in colloquial parlance.
Times have changed dramatically. In real-life too, Hindi or Urdu isn't spoken with traditional purity. Perhaps Amitabh Bachchan is one of the few actors who used Hindi as the language ought to be on the Kaun Banega Crorepati television game show. Among the heroines, at least Vidya Balan has sought to get her accents dot-on in her dialogue delivery. Sushmita Sen, too, has elocuted the dialogues assigned to her with fluency.
Piquantly, it was director Hrishikesh Mukherjee, with his origins in Bengal, who tackled the contentious use of Hindi language with outstanding results, particularly in Anand and Chupke Chupke with the collaboration of his writers Gulzar (Anand, Chupke Chupke) and Rahi Masoom Raza (Gol Maal).
Earlier, according to online records, Mukherjee's mentor Bimal Roy had extracted unforgettable dialogues from Paul Mahendra (Do Bigha Zamin, Bandini, Sujata) and Rajinder Singh Bedi (Madhumati).
The downward curve in the fine art of writing dialogues actually began with the excessive use of double entendres in the David Dhawan comedies.
In another manner altogether, when Bollywood's films found a growing audience in Indians settled overseas, the mix of Hindi and English was warranted - and fast. Ditto, the fact that the younger generation, at home and overseas, connected with characters who frequently spoke in a smattering of English, kicking off with Aditya Chopra's Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge.
Karan Johar's films (starting with Kuch Kuch Hota Hai) lived with the times and the environment depicted. English had become cool, and this was underscored in Karan Johar's last release Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, in which the funtime girl, played by Lisa Haydon, keeps making linguistic faux pas with comic chutzpah. Quite smartly written and well-executed on the big screen.
Both Aditya Chopra and Karan Johar can carry off the hybrid contemporary dialogue breezily. The scripts of Rajkumar Hirani, Farhan Akhtar and Zoya Akhtar have also been hip and in sync with today's vocabulary. Innumerable writers, though, bank on bombast in almost every second line to woo the audience with punch-lines far more suitable to melodramatic stage plays.
Incidentally, the British TV series Mind Your Language (1977-'86) had inspired the Mumbai-produced version Zabaan Sambhalke (1993-1997); the interplay of different languages and dialects makes the Zabaan. series a household rage.
In a similar vein, Gauri Shinde's directorial debut English Vinglish focused on a homemaker, marvellously portrayed by Sridevi, who joins a language course in New York to keep pace with her angrezi-speaking husband and daughter.
How to speak or not to speak can be terrific story material. Snag: when a film like Half Girlfriend foists the theme into the plot as a side dish, you can't help but wish that dialogue writers and their directors would mind their Ps and Qs.
wknd@khaleejtimes.com