Long live the queen, long live uncle sam

Recently I was in a restaurant, after a nice sumptous meal we ordered something that was not on the menu. "Please, being the bill", the waiter looked at me in a way you look at sleeper class travellers while you are in the AC II tier. I felt rural at the same time I was amused when a friend repeated, "get us the check please", the waiter promptly obliged. "ah so these days we call it check, man vocabulary is changing fast" I thought. I remember when my dad used to take me to "eating out", we usually had masala dosa and frooti (and Tree Top, those who remember the delightfull fruit drink), and invariably we always ended with asking for the "bill". Where did things change then? some government circular perhaps? It was something called "americanisation".

But shouldn't we hail a "cab" instead of a "taxi", shouldn't we pocket a rupee "bill" rather than rupee "note", shouldn't we call the silencer as "muffler". Perhaps we might start that soon. We would copy everything that is chick and easy. We never thought of copying the american work culture, american hard work spirit, american quest for innovation...hogwash, why should we? We created Infosys, Wipro, Satyam our core competency is servicing others and copying, dare we even think of Apple or Google.

Be it anything we look westward for approval, Lagaan not winning the oscar was a matter of national sorrow, as if some twead sporting 60 year old caucasian who thought every Indian is from INDIANA is the perfect person to judge a song and dance sprinkled story about a village 6000 km away. The backbencher doctor from India if has a MS stamp from US is put at par with our AIIMS graduates. I know of a friend who was upset because her colleagues did not wish to goto a "mall" and prefered a museum instead, and a mutual friend watched all the episodes of American pride slapstick sitcom "FRIENDS" with subtitles. We shall go to any extent to look "cool" (an american colloquial word) and which comes in coherence with becoming american and not take pride in what we are taught as english. India took pride in mastering the language, we spoke it in perfect grammar, till uncle sam came.

It's not just the language, we just copy anything without putting our brains. In college there was a dear friend of mine, he dwelled in south bombay (You could get away with speaking hindi in DMK national convention, but dare speak it in South Bombay), he loved to dress like hiphoppers, pants low, undies visible et al and his music was 50 cents, an ex convict in US who makes a living by "singing" words which have all permutations and combinations of incest, glorification of guns, derogation of women. I mean in hiphop english it sounds like song. If abuses is what hiphop fans enjoy, why not come to me, I too can give a mouthfull :) that too in vernacular so that you can enjoy it even more.

Look around you, you might have an aunty or neighbour whose son would eat burgers and pizzas all day and his mom would sound cool by saying "o ji, bunty na he drinks only papsi ji, water to ji he deos not even touch", what a pride :), water crisis solved, infact food crisis solved.
Lets all eat like bunty and clog out arteries. There was a south bombay dweller in IIT Bombay, who did not know that flour came from wheat which came from field and NOT directly from factory packed in a packet, offcourse he also could not write his name in hindi.

French would never do it, Germans would never do it, Japs take pride in speaking japanese but we hardly care, if it's american it is "the" thing. I don't say wear a dhoti kurta to work, or shut the call centres to add dignity to our youth. But "think" before you say "check" instead of "bill", think before you long for what Joey speaks or does, think that they have worked for 200 years in their own way, their entire culture is based on doing things differently from UK, copying an idea works, but copying a country does not, even today my niece was confused over whether there is a "u" in "colour" or not? thanks to MS WORD coming out of Seattle, the "u" was sliced out.


PS: I don't watch FRIENDS, I watch Scrubs instead, it has the same nonsense english only it lacks the annoying laughter track, further in my defence I also watched Boston Legal and Yes Minister!