Amaro Porano Jaha Chay
One of the ironies in my life (and this one has a tragic ring about it) is the fact that I have lost my childhood fluency in Bengali, a language that I believe is infinitely more beautiful, more melodious, more playful, and more delightful than English which can get rather drab at times and which is the language that now permeates my entire being. Indeed, I like to divide the world not along national lines but along linguistic ones so that I instinctively feel more comfortable in the presence of a Bengali-speaker from Dhaka, London, or New York than a Hindi-speaker from Patna, an Assamese-speaker from Tezpur (Assamese and not Bengali, by the way, is my native tongue), or a Tamil-speaker from Chennai. Indeed, if I were to meet a Bengali-speaker in Islamabad, I would willingly fraternize with the enemy. Does this make me a linguistic chauvinist? Yes, and No. No, because this is not to say that Bengali-speakers have by virtue of their speaking Bengali attained the pinnacle of Humanity (whatever that is). But Yes, because only native speakers of Bengali know what those who cannot read Rabindranath Tagore in the original are missing out in life. (Still not satisfied? You insist that when two Bengalis meet each other, they should speak not in Bengali but in English? My!My!My! Is that not another disguised form of linguistic chauvinism? One in favour of English?)