The death of Hindi

I am no jingoistic nationalist linguist ruing what many have rued before me. I just happen to belong to a generation which I believe is single handedly responsible for making Hindi what it is today. I am from a generation which is not good at Hindi and is proud of it. We are anyway sh*te at English but like to think we know it well. I have to strain my senses to speak one complete sentence strung together with only Hindi words. I am not much better at English either. I write a blog in English and maintain a site in English, partly because I cant write much Hindi and even if I manage to, my readers sure wont understand most of it. We also live in times where people are judged on their English speaking abilities. If you are polite and speak Hindi, you have probably not made it in life and would never do it. If you speak English, courtesy does not matter. You are very likely either someone big or someone connected or both.

I wonder how it came to this. I am not one of those people who whinge at change. Its nice to see things changing, thats the way it is supposed to be. To see a language dying, however is sad. To see an entire art of expressing your thoughts wilt away? To see tons of literature, where you can learn a lot from going waste? These are just catastrophic scenarios and yet they are coming true. By letting the education system veer towards teaching everything in English (except thankfully Hindi as a language) and not do it well and then let the world buy our 'cheap English speaking skills' (which are dubious at best), I dont know where we have reached. In isloation, I dont think either of this is bad. English is the international language, no harm learning it. If you speak better English than others and can earn bread for it, thats even better. What are the fallouts though? That we are often found lacking to find words?

I dont want to cringe and whinge more. By letting it reach here, Hindi does not lose. I am the loser. Starting today, I am going to start reading some long pending Hindi books, only because there is a lot to learn there which I have been missing. I may not find all of them here. Will anybody volunteer to send me some books please? Dont worry, I will pay.