“Hahaha. You chat with a very specific time schedule and have a very distinct style of saying things. I like it.”

It was 2008.

On the other side of Gtalk window was Manish.

I didn’t have broadband connection at home and used the now almost extinct cyber cafes to connect online.
Of course I chatted with a very specific time schedule.

And of course I had a very distinct style of communication. I used strictly Hindi for oral and strictly English for written communication.

We were then living in the pre-smartphone era when SMS used to be preferred mode of instant communication. And the keypad dictionary recognised English words more than Hindi. But almost every friend of mine then was Hindi speaking. So may be those were the reasons.

Then something changed as I left college in 2011.

English entered the predominantly Hindi oral communication, while Hindi forayed into written English.

And slowly all of it amalgamated into a very ugly lingo which we sometimes refer to as “Hinglish” (not to be confused with the act of writing Hindi words in Roman script).

And I know exactly the people who screwed up my vocabulary and grammar. But what can anyone do. As they say you are an average of 5 people with whom you spend most of your time. The 5 people at that time preferred Hinglish.

I was influenced. The two languages were murdered together.

And now the situation is so bad I can barely write or speak a few sentences in one of these languages without making use of a few words from other. This sucks.

But I am reclaiming back my languages. Starting now I will (try to) either use English or Hindi to communicate but NOT both at the same time.

Please catch me if you see me violating this rule.

And to Manish : The senior who helped me a lot in my initial college days, but whom I never got to meet because he was from a different college and whom I have not been in contact with since last 4 years… THANK YOU.