Dear Modern Hindi,
I carry your thoughts in my mind, I carry your memories in my heart, I carry your voice in winds, I carry your stories in my chants, I carry your ring on my finger, and I carry a part of your soul within me. With you, I don’t stammer or hesitate, I flow freely.
I just want you to be in the moment, staring at the world, the way I stare at you being a special part of this world, the way this world seems to me. You’re the language, I speak with my eyes.
You’re a hope for me. A hope to live, a hope to write better, not only for my expression only, for the happy secrets we have. You’re a dream. A dream to be created in the depths of the heart so that they can be exhaled into the world where moment by moment they slowly turn into reality. For the world you see around you is nothing else, but a glimpse of all the worlds within you, my wife: my modern Hindi. My pen waits for your arrival. My voice chord swims deep in your words and eyes, stays awake late daily to read your soul before I sleep.
You know that my mother in law/your mother: Hindi is more beautiful than you, but fortunately, I found you: short -independent. And you’d be glad to know you are far more inspiring than the smileys, short quotes which you throw as tantrums on mobile apps sometimes. You know there are still lakhs of millennial fans, ready to die for you, which is of-course less than your mother who’s a superstar for the world. She’s so energetic & vibrant even now, that whenever she expresses, the world claps for her. She’s like that oldest lady’s thumka in a sangeet ceremony, who sways all the claps & whistles from the audience. Being a son-in-law of such intellectual & royal family, I feel lucky.
Whether it’s a monsoon evening, sitting near a river or a dinner at our home, gossips with Urdu Masi along with mother-in-law still remain as golden memory I want to re-visit back again. Urdu Masi brings out that deep emotion from all of us and weaves our inner & outer world so poetically. I love that.
And Hinglish, I know she feels insecure with you but I’ll talk to her once again, about all our secrets like always, listen to her stories, which might make her comfortable & sort our differences.
But, as it happens in a family. There are few times when we have felt discomfort on fans over-obsession or over-protective nature for mother in law’s stardom. While a majority of them says, they regard Hindi as their mother but I somehow doubt them. Today, every woman knows her worth, she can protect herself, her ambition, her dreams and what they need is just standing beside them, like how her family is, without being over protective. It’s painful to see mother-in-law like this and it can happen to you too. I can’t understand why few fans are over obsessive for her in few parts of the country specifically? Who’re they, a bunch of ‘contractors’? Is this all planned or some conspiracy behind it?
I won’t question you about these mundane things or even about your existence. Questions kill everything. So I’ll just let you be, watching my pen play hide and seek with our words, building upon our random dreams, and throwing them into the future, hoping that they’ll fulfil. But then just lying there and leaving every worry to the past, because sometimes the reality of this present moment is enough with you. Just being with you, for every expression.
Love doesn’t come with a forever guarantee but it comes with the excitement of creating that forever in this moment. Love is about freedom, and I’m sure I won’t let this happen with mother in law or with you.
More love & peace for you, my language. I’m always with the family.
Yours
Sagar Vishnoi