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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ibnanv" data-source="post: 21922298" data-attributes="member: 218596">Looking English, talking Hindi: Hindi cinema and television scripts are no longer written in Hindi <img src="http://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/movies/article19230887.ece/alternates/FREE_660/09SMbombay-velvetjpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />Hindi cinema and television are neither conceived nor executed in Hindi. She was pregnant with a child.” This sentence was the bone of  contention. As the Hindi writer on the show, I had been given a detailed  brief, in English, to write the voiceovers. My job was to write,  rewrite and rewrite again till they were satisfied. “They” were a bunch  of highly-paid professionals with a fancy office in Bandra. Many of them  had foreign degrees that got them jobs at the production house which  specialised in bringing the best directors from abroad to shoot  commercials in India. For a change, they were doing a show in Hindi.My  creative producer was an experienced editor and a delightful writer.  But the problem was that she couldn’t read or write Hindi. And she  wasn’t alone. Neither could the presenter of the show.Now the  tricky part was that my creative producer had to vet my script before it  was sent to the channel. Since it was a television show, it required  two more clearances—from the producer at the channel and their legal  team—before it could be shot. All of them were doing their best to make  sure that my Hindi was flawless. A pregnant pause“Which of these words means pregnant,” I was asked. “None,” I said. I had written “Woh maa banne wali thhee.”  (She was expecting). The next question was whether there was no word  for pregnant in Hindi. I told them that there was. However, the idea was  not just to translate but to make it feel conversational.Silence. I asked, “Have you heard anyone in real life saying, ‘main garbhavati hoon’?”  They seemed convinced but then came the masterstroke. “And what  about... with a child?” There is infinite scope to misinterpret a  literally translated sentence like, “Woh ek bachche se garbhavati thee.”Anybody  who has worked as a Hindi dialogue writer can recount hundreds of such  stories. The unfortunate reality of Hindi cinema and television is that  they are neither conceived nor executed in Hindi. Scripts are written in  English and many actors need their Hindi dialogues transliterated into  Roman to be able to read them.Language has always been the bone  of contention in Hindi cinema. In fact, many would argue, rightly, that  it has never been Hindi but Urdu cinema, because dialogues in the early  days had always been in chaste Lakhnawi Urdu.And if you ever look  at the names hung on the walls of Film Writers’ Association (FWA) in  Mumbai, you would realise that many of them were acclaimed writers and  poets of the language. The bridge that traditionally existed between  Hindi/ Urdu literature and Hindi cinema collapsed over the years.Whether 3 Idiots or Bombay Velvet,  Hindi cinema is increasingly turning to books for inspiration. However,  it’s hard to think of a Hindi novel or a story that got adapted  recently. This wasn’t always the case. When lyricist Shailendra decided  to produce a movie—Teesri Kasam (1966)—he chose an adaptation of Phanishwar Nath Renu’s short story ‘Maare Gaye Gulfam’.In regional cinema, National Award winning Punjabi film Chauthi Koot was adapted from Waryam Singh Sandhu’s short stories, while India’s official entry to the Oscars, Visaranai, was based on M. Chandrakumar’s novel Lock Up.  So why is Hindi literature not being adapted into movies? Are Hindi  writers not producing good material any more or are the decision makers  simply ignorant of their existence?Market constraintsThere is another challenge: the biggest market for a Hindi film is Western India where Hindi isn’t the primary language.In fact, what is considered the Hindi heartland isn’t significant to the business of most Hindi films anymore.However,  as Hindi cinema is intended for a pan-Indian audience, it has a burden  to bear. The burden of being simple to the point of being simplistic.  One operates with a limited vocabulary of a few hundred words, using  “explanatory” expressions and a language meant mostly for effect.Many  years ago, when I was a college student, I heard Bengali  writer-director Rituparno Ghosh speak on screenwriting. He showed us the  screenplay of Asukh, the film he was working on at the time. It was a beautifully handwritten draft in Bengali.Recently,  my Sri Lankan filmmaker friend Prasanna Vithanage showed me his  Sinhalese screenplay. I can’t think of any filmmaker of my generation  who wrote a script in Hindi and got it made. But I am not even proposing  that Hindi films be written in Hindi because that is an impractical  idea. Most decision makers wouldn’t be able to read it, be it studio  heads, actors or their managers.But the beauty of Hindi cinema is that it is made by people from all over the country. I made my Hindi film Chauranga with a Bengali cinematographer, a Malayali sound designer, an Odia location sound recordist and a Goan music director.It’s  a situation unique to Hindi films where its primary audience and the  people who make them don’t use the language in their lives. But I’m not  complaining. It offers poor writers like me new avenues.<a href="http://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/movies/looking-english-talking-hindi/article19230888.ece" target="_blank">http://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/movies/looking-english-talking-hindi/article19230888.ece</a></blockquote>

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