Last week, in a moment of rare comedic genius that should be a scene in a Borat sort of movie, India’s home minister gave a speech to several India-focused committees at the UN, in New York, in Hindi, expecting arrangements were made for simultaneous translation for foreign dignitaries. None had been made because the arrangers of such things, i.e., Indian Foreign Service people, expected the speech, as most Indian political speeches are abroad, in English.



English to Hindi translations are tricky at the best of times. Anyone watching a Bollywood movie on any airplane would know. There’s often the embarrassing moment when one is sitting next to an European or American person who is reading a subtitle like, “Oh girl, why you torment my heart so that it tears my tendons?” for a simple Hindi line like, “Tum pyar nahi karte ho mujh se?”, and he turns and looks to you with a “Are these people serious?” look.



So what resulted when the minister carried on and the audience realised no one would translate were reactions ranging from a lot of nodding to outright befuddlement. However, these are graceful diplomats so everyone had to pretend like communication was happening.



I’m sure they looked for pointers like a finger raised meant something important was being said, hand-cut-across gesture meant something was being denied, smirk meant something hilarious. One or two of them even had the gall to pretend to take notes.



One even said afterwards, “There were several important issues raised in the speech. We will look into it.” It would perhaps be an even greater victory for world diplomacy if countries signed agreements and pacts based on a speech that they didn’t understand a word of.



Odd as it was for the audience, it was probably odder for the hon’ble home minister to get off the podium to realise he wasn’t actually talking to the live audience he thought he’d floored with his ideas. He was talking at, but not to.



It reminded me of a story a stand-up comedian told me of talking to an entirely Japanese audience in English. There was dead silence once he finished the observation. Then two minutes later, explosion of laughter. The two minutes were for the translation of the line.



It must be a really odd experience to just wait there while his idea was being translated. Here, in the absence of that, the minister would probably get a movie file three days later from people in the audience, once they’d read the speech in English, giving him a standing ovation from their individual offices.



Of all the tragedies in the world, looking into faces and not communicating when you think you’re communicating, is perhaps the greatest. Ask any married couple.



India’s language argument in external affairs has always been the same, and now popping up again in articles and columns. Should Indian leaders speak to leaders abroad in Hindi? Why not, seems the logical answer. Other bigwigs, such as Angela Merkel, whoever is Japan’s prime minister this week, the Chinese who own everything, don’t have to sound like they just auditioned for the movie Lagaan to play a British officer.



They don’t care. Headphones can be put on, the world can understand each other as long as sensible things are being said. The thing is though, this is going to take time for our infrastructure to adapt to.



For the longest time, Indian external affairs meant one approach. The black Nehru jacket half coat, and a grave British accent. An accent so British that even the British would take a second to understand it. And it didn’t matter what you were saying with that accent. You could be talking about where to eat a carrot. It sounded important. It sounded like a Bond villain.



Hindi was an internal chit-chat language. A fixer no-one-will-understand-while-we-plot language. Not the language out to the world. Out to the world, the message was, ‘Hear us, world. We are important Indian dignitaries but we could also fit in just as well in a BBC Jane Austen adaptation TV series’.



That’s all changing in a proudly Hindi-speaking, forget-the-history-of-Empire, kind of new republic. But there are still a significant percentage of 'Hello, old chap' hangers-on of a kind of India where how you spoke English defined who you were (I’m included in this feeble thinning lot).



Even if you sold steel or ball bearings, you quoted Shakespeare while addressing your Jamshedpur labourers. They didn’t understand and you didn’t care. That kind of person will take time to realise it's okay for our leaders not to care what wine to ask for, what “when I was in London…” show-off line to drop. To look Obama or Cameron in the eye and say, “Dekho boss, bat yeh hai ki…”



Until then, to quote Shakespeare (I did tell you I was one of them), the rest is silence



