Learning languages, even if they are from the same linguistic family, is not easy, and is pretty time-intensive. When even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh couldn’t educate himself to read and write Devanagari (his schooling was in Urdu and Punjabi, and any Hindi speech of his needed to be transcribed in Gurmukhi or Nastaliq) though he had at his disposal so many resources and a sharper mind than most, what hope do the rest of us have? I may, one day in the distant future, be able to read Kalki Krishnamurthy in original, or write romantic poetry in Tamil, but that day is not today, and I need to express myself today.