Use Languages Correctly. Should we

                                                                      Use Languages Correctly. Should we?

"It's funny, because then I'll ust start mixing languages, ..I'm saying a sentence with three different languages, and I just don't even know what I'm saying" - Emma Raducanu, the British No. 1 Women Tennis player

Fortunately, many Indians can handle three languages in one sentence, just naturally, or because of the environment! 

I belong to the group that believes language is more than a means of communication, however small the addition might be. It needs no explanation to say that as humans evolved, various groups created different means of first oral and then written language and there could never have been a single language across the world. Each of these languages, howsoever remote it may have been centuries ago, changed including its own variation of words from the other groups it interacted with. The above is almost like a lecture and I am sorry for that.

But, today I came to understand that the head of a powerful organisation said two things, and I am quoting them as given in the newspaper:

1. [N]owadays children mix their mother tongue and English while speaking

2. English medium education was not to be blamed, but rather the languages used in the home.

I do not know what the organization’s biggie wanted, per quote 1. It was 1976, in the middle of summer at IIT Kanpur; I was there to be admitted to PG studies, after a test and an interview. A fellow aspirant (both of us had gained entry) went with me to the post office to send a telegram to his parents about his success. There, when my friend asked for the form for telegram in English, the fellow at the desk asked him in Hindi (I could somewhat handle a conversation in Hindi), “Aren’t you an Indian? Why don’t you talk in Hindi?” Things were said from both sides, I would slide by those.

Our mother tongue, Tamil, was of no use to both of us in that situation. And, English was one of the two languages designated “Official” in the Constitution of India. So, it was a situation when neither my friend’s mother tongue nor English could have saved him. 

Further on point 1, at home and as far as I can tell, a majority of Indians use words at least from two languages in one sentence. I went to Yamunotri and Gangotri and nowhere did I use Hindi exclusively; it was always a mixture of English and the smattering Hindi I knew. I, like everyone else, wish to make life easy not just myself, but also for those with whom I am conversing. What is wrong about that?

Per point 2, it is overhead transmission for me what the biggie wanted to say. I know families whose native languages are Telugu and Kannada, residing in Chennai. They know Tamil and Hindi too alongside their mother tongue. I am jealous of them. 

I know enough number of Malayali families in Delhi; the youngest of the lot (I am talking early to mid 1990s) in a family I was close to was most convenient speaking in Malayalam and Hindi, and her English was developing (she was in IX standard then). Now, she has been in the US for more than two decades, and I am sure she is a tri-linguist. But which language would she use at home? Whatever the family as a unit finds most convenient. What is wrong with that?

I had a friend whose eldest elder sister spoke such Hindi and so very fluently, I was narrated the following incidence: Her Hindi, when travelling by train from Delhi, as she spoke surprised her co-travellers that she was Tamilian; her Hindi was flawless.

People learn and use English professionally and may also do so in family settings as the situation demands. Some appropriate English words pop up in the mind unannounced, and only a fool would fight that.

Raghuram Ekambaram

How Simplistically A President of India Understood Biodiversity

                                          How Simplistically A President of India Understood Biodiversity

When I read the newspaper item reproduced below, I thought, Oh, no! not again about the Great Nicobar Infrastructure Project regarding which news items have been galore. This region is a biodiversity hot spot, I have known for a while. Rather my thoughts ran towards a visit I paid to the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi.

An apparently new species of snake, an elusive bird that has been photographed only a quarter of a dozen times and perhaps such other finds tentatively validates assigning the tag “new species”.

I do not want to name the President of India whose understanding is the subject matter here. When my wife and visited the place, there was an area not necessarily marked off but one knew that it is something special. This was a plot of perhaps 30 m by 30 m, and sub-dividedinto, say, 10 parts. Each part was seeded and tended to by, it looked like, gardeners. Visitors were guided to this plot and were given a choice of a small potted plant that to take home, and do whatever they wished to do with it.

This was supposedly a lesson in biodiversity, I learned. Such nonsense.

When biodiversity is to be studied, the focus must be on how plants, insects and even animals interact with each other to cooperate and compete simultaneously for each to get to breed more and avoid predatorz. This structured dance among living beings, including humans, is what leads to biological diversity.

In the above described limited area in the Rashtrapati Bhavan, each young plant was left to itself with a rare butterfly acting as an agent for the flower of the plant (if it were one such) to let it grow. It is not impossible that in the rest of the vast expanse of the residence of the President of India, there are more varieties of living beings, some of whom are ranked and privileged, like the mega fauna in the forests or in the oceans!    

One more thing before I sign off. I read that it has been suggested to rechristen Raj Bhavans, the residential estates of the Governors of states, to something that tunes better with the nature and the structure of our political system; abjure Raj as we do not live under a king, yet retain the privileges. This is another kind of dance!

Raghuram Ekambaram

P. S. Today’s newspaper brought me the bad news: The Raj Bhavan in Chennai has already been named Lok Bhavan. Governor R. N. Ravi is very busy taking directions from the Union Government and executing them promptly. Good for the state.

Raghuram Ekambaram

"... she slept with her head pillowed on my arm”

                                             "... she slept with her head pillowed on my arm”

I am sure many readers of mine would recall from their reading the heading of the post, particularly if they are fans of science fiction. But, the point I am going to try to make here is about the English language.

The long phrase appears in a book that was written immediately prior to the year 1895. I do not claim to have read thousands, or even hundreds of books in English, fiction, non-fiction, anthologies, biographies, commentaries on politics, social, and economic issues. Yet, I am going to confidently assert that verbal usage of the noun “pillow” is an almost a unique instance, repeated rarely, if ever. I had not come across it anywhere else. I am not going to Google to find out as that would make the impact the phrase made on me nothing special, which is untrue.

This is how a language could claim to be living, going beyond mere surviving, as I had written earlier. The flexibility that a language affords its users to change it, that is living. One lives only by changing, discarding not with any intention to discard but as a natural development and similarly accepting new usages for words; no one tells you. It just happens.

French language is juggling itself between surviving and living. Historians can correct me, the reason the British became a successful colonizer and the French did not could be attributed to the flexibility their languages carried intrinsically.

To end this post, Sanskrit should become more like English; adopt new words, grammar, and present itself to the world as something new, for it to switch itself from surviving (merely liturgically, in epics, puranas) to living.

Raghuram Ekambaram

It is Just as Well that India has Only a Volunteer Military

                                                It is Just as Well that India has Only a Volunteer Military

A national military could comprise volunteers or could be through conscription (the draft, in the US). The heading of this post claims that for India, a volunteer military service is better than the alternatives. The justification for the claim comes from Israel.

Among Israel Jewry, there is a group named ultra-Orthodox; the group supposedly devotes itself full-time to studying sacred Jewish texts and are given a “de facto pass from mandatory military service”, quoted from The Hindu of November 30, 2025 (scanned image given above). The unflattering label this group carries is “draft-dodgers”, carrying the connotation that their studying their religious texts has the ulterior, yet primary motive of getting exemption from military service.

Now, imagine the Indian military runs conscription to add to its personnel population. Immediately, termites will come out of the woodwork carrying religious placards, and seeking exemptions from serving in the military: Vaishnavite Hindus who study Vaishnavite scriptures; Saivites studying Saivite scriptures; Bengalis demanding exemption as their Goddess is already very violent, proxy for Bengali population; Vedic Brahmins studying the Vedas and other scriptures; Christians, the New Testament (King James version, or the New Revised version…); Parsis, Zend-avesta; Muslims, the Koran; Jews, the Torah and the Old Testament; Buddhists, the Pali Canon, the Theravada Tradition, or Chinese Buddhist Canon.

The above must tell you that India is full of religious termites that would eat away the idea of India inside-out. 

Hence, the volunteer military is the best match for India.

Raghuram Ekambaram      

Shouldn’t it be Golden Friday, Rather than Black Friday in the US?

                                                Shouldn’t it be Golden Friday, Rather than Black Friday in the US?

Thanksgiving, the family celebration on the fourth Thursday of November, is unique to the US.

The next day marks the official start of Christmas shopping. Yes, Between Black Friday and Christmas Eve (till 7:00 PM, if I am not wrong) whatever commercial transactions take place, they go into the accounts books as Christmas sales, even revenues of gas stations, airlines ticket are counted under this rubric. That is how seriously commerce is taken in the US.Really.

This year, 2025, there are only 27 days of Christmas shopping, three days of November and 24 days of December. Maybe that is why it is called Black Friday, too few days to do Christmas shopping! No, that can’t be.

The Commerce department of the US Government compiles the money value of Christmas shopping every year, and compares that with the previous year taking into account the variation in the number of Christmas shopping days. For example, if the 1st of November falls on a Thursday, there would be a total of 32 days of Christmas shopping (if I counted wrong, do the math yourself). The eyes of retailers bug out!

If this period is marked for shopping, and all retailers and some others too, the start of this Christmas season must be Gold (lettered; ask D J Trump to tell you how) Friday. This is why I am flummoxed it is called Black Friday.

Perhaps someone would clarify.

Raghuram Ekambaram

P. S. Please note that I have highlighted (in italics) Christmas, sales, shopping etc. to make the point that Christmas appears to have turned its back on Jesus Christ, and towards shopping.

Marketing by Abbreviations

                                                                 Marketing by Abbreviations

I bought a book on marketing costing less than Rs. 300. I knew right then that it has to be a primer. The book, only about 200 pages at the most (I bought the Kindle version, no pages marked), happens to be a pre-primer. Yes, that is how simplistic (not just simple, but simplistic) the book is. 

I do have to mention why I bought the book in the first place. I do not have any book on any topic of management in my personal library, and I thought I would fill that lacuna with this one on marketing. In my reckoning, marketing is on the second rung from the bottom, HR being the lowest in management studies, finance being at the top. I wanted to start and climb up, if I desired. Fortunately, I would not waste any more money.

The book has far too many, for my taste, abbreviations. These would anchor my report on the book. In fact, beyond these abbreviations I may not have much to say about the book.

CMO – Chief Marketing Officer (of a company)

TL;DR – Too long; didn’t read

BBP – Brand Building Pentagon (I think the Pentagon in or in the neighbourhood of Washington DC needs no brand building!)

SPANCO – Suspect, Prospect, Analysis, Negotiation, Conclusion and Order

B2B – Business-to-business (I am, and so would you be, know this; yet as the author condescended to expand it for us, I am including it in this list)

As an aside, I would like to count the number of readers of my posts who know what A2B is? It stands for Adyar Ananda Bhavan, a big thing in Chennai and Tamil Nadu.

Getting back to the list,

B2C – Business-to customers/consumers

CTO – Chief Technology Officer

MHI – Monthly household income

SEC – Socio-economic classification

CWE – Chief wage earner

OBC – Organisational buying centre

CEO – Chief Executive Officer (I added the full form, not given in the book)

CDJ – Customer decision journey

CMIE – Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy

NFHS – National Family Health Survey

SIAM – Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (This should have been given, but was not)

Gen AI – Generative artificial Intelligence

FGD – Focus group discussion

MFG – (digital) mini-focus group

DI – Depth interview

ECG – Extended creativity group

U&A – Usage and attitude study

TOM – Top-of-mind (awareness)

UA – Unaided awareness

AA – Aided awareness

CU – Current usage

EU – Ever usage

ZMOT – Zero Moment of Truth

NPS – Net promoter scores

C-sat – Consumer satisfaction (surveys)

Then, there are the numbered letters, like

The four Ps – price, product, place and promotion (let us see how many times you need to repeat the four Ps before you can recall them at a snap!) 

The above is from Chapter 1 only. I have gone through the whole book, the rest three chapters. The standard is no better and the abbreviations are not any scarcer. Please believe me. If this forms a part of orientation towards management, I say, May God Bless Ye and scoot away in a trice!

Raghuram Ekambaram

Making Sense of Trumpian English

                                                               Making Sense of Trumpian English

In this post I am quoting Donald J. Trump, President of the United States as reported by The Hindu of 2025-11-29 and am trying to make sense of what he said. I have no skin in this game. A scanned coy of the statement is given below

What is the meaning of “to pause an activity”? As I understand, it is to stop an activity temporarily, with an intention to start later. Check me on that.

Yet, the US President said that he would “[P]ermanently pause migration from all Third World Countries.” Third World Countries? That classification went out with George Herbert Walker Bush. What it is now I do not know but what came after “Third World Countries” was “Least Developed Countries.” Then, Trump introduced a classification, “Shit hole countries” during his first term as POTUS.

Now, the above was merely to indicate that some enterprising entrepreneur could compile a Trumpian Dictionary of Obsolete Words and Phrases!

The most recent phrase is, “[P]ermanently pause”. Let us parse this. What Trump wants is to stop migration permanently and temporarily.

Good for me that I made sense of that. Did you?

Raghuram Ekambaram

The Best Detergent for Washing Away Empathy from Your Mind – Religion

                                The Best Detergent for Washing Away Empathy from Your Mind – Religion

Amongst Thamizh Brahmins, there are rules to show even sympathy to someone who has lost a dear one. One shalt not call on (or even telephone, send an SMS or a note on WhatsApp to) the bereaved family on the third/sixth/eighth (for example) day after death, and definitely not after sun down; and also on, certain phases of the moon. The above is merely a short list.That is, even showing sympathy is time-prescribed and -limited. All of the above are dictated to by superstitions propped up by religions and none can take away the props.

If that is for sympathy, merely imagine the case for empathy. Thou shalt not empathize with the bereaved. For the uninitiated, empathy is putting oneself in the shoes of the person/family that is grieving. It is not, “I feel sorry that he lost a dear one,” rather, “I am feeling the pain he is feeling.” This comes vividly in the teachings of the Buddha. 

Yet, empathy is not only sad events. The Buddha also talked about empathetic joy. You are feeling a good happening to others as happening to you. No competition between your neighbour and you! Think about that the next time you go for a new car. You are buying a car for yourself and not to show your middle finger to your neighbour!

I am not singling out Thamizh Brahmins. I am sure there a number of communities that have such rigidities, all imposed by religion. Only because I am a Thamizh Brahmin (a lapsed one, for sure) and can talk with relative confidence only about them.

Raghuram Ekambaram

Had the President of India Droupadi Murmu Been a Man

                                                Had the President of India Droupadi Murmu Been a Man 

Why do our politicians miss no opportunity to put their foot in their mouth?

The Assam State Assembly passed the Assam Prohibition of Polygamy Bill, 2025. The government (represented by its Chief Minister) reserved the Bill “for the assent of President Droupadi Murmu. I do not think the Bill will be denied approval,” and added, “as the President is a woman.”

The shoes are squarely in the mouth of the Chief Minister of Assam. Does he think there was a chance a male President of India could have sent back the bill for reconsideration? The position of the President of India is nothing more or less than the First Citizen of India, be the position be occupied by a male or a female. The Chief Minister of Assam forgot this basic lesson about the structure of governance of India. So much is the pity.

By the way, Mrs. Indira Gandhi was referred to as Madame Prime Minister and never as Prime Ministress!

Raghuram Ekambaram  

Vaccination Will Not Cure the Genetic/Infectious Disease of Religion

                                      Vaccination Will Not Cure the Genetic/Infectious Disease of Religion

I understand vaccine as a disabled virus; to give a more meaningful explanation, a vaccine stimulates immunity to a particular pathogen. It is perhaps better to understand a vaccine from what it cannot do: it cannot be used against common cold, caused by a plethora of pathogens that mutate frequently.

With that out of the way, I think religion is more like common cold than any serious pathogen! There was one man who thought he found a vaccine which he used it to great positive effect on himself.

That was The Buddha. It, Buddhism, lasted for a few centuries perhaps, at least somewhat effectively and then, it lost its effectiveness. Yet, before that, the vaccine had spread itself quite far.

Then, came the death-defining transformation, the vaccine became a disease. How else would you define the violence in Sri Lanka (Religion co-opted by politics) and Myanmar, where it is the Buddhists who cause violence? As far as I know there is minimal violence in Tibet, but none can say when it becomes more than minimal.

The virus of religion cannot be extirpated.

Raghuram Ekambaram

"[A]s soon as possible” v. “[R]easonable period”

                                                   "[A]s soon as possible” v. “[R]easonable period”

I am not even a legal sparrow, yet I dare to discuss the two phrases mentioned in the heading of the post.

Why did the five-judge Bench of the Supreme Court not use the phrase “as soon as possible” in its response to the Presidential Reference in its November 20th “judgement” as reported in the newspaper, probably on August 21, 2025 [the word judgement is within quotes as the question whether a Presidential Reference seeks a “judgement” or merely an opinion is not addressed] against its own earlier judgement on April 8th, 2025. The phrase used is, “reasonable period”. 

If the recent pronouncement from the five-judge Bench is a judgement, the judgement of April 8th can be appealed, I understand as a layman. If it addresses merely a Presidential Reference, the judgement of April 8th cannot be overruled, the then CJI quoted in the newspaper article.

My question pertains to the subsequent statement of the CJI in the same space. “[W]e can observe that the law as laid down in a particular manner [in a judgement] is not correct.” Then, an observation from the Bench is not equivalent to a judgement! Then, how can the incorrect judgement as stated by the five-judge Bench be appealed against? The Bench’s error would have become the law of the land. “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is” – In Marbury v. Madison (US Supreme Court). In layman’s terms, the law is what the Supreme Court says the law is!

However, on this issue the Supreme Court of India has said two opposite things. OK, if you say a five-judge Bench overrules the earlier verdict, I would say a judgement overrules a response to a Presidential Reference. The classic “Which came first, the fruit or the seeds?”  

The matter has not been argued to the end. Coming back to the original question, why did the response to the Presidential Reference use an alternative phrase, “reasonable time.” Are these two phrases synonyms or not? If they are not, the April 8th judgement stands. If not, can it not be appealed?

Are you not opening a box of Pandoras?

All said, the issue is not closed. This is the story of Indian jurisprudence, it appears to this layman. I would accept a definitive clarification.

This sparrow can at best fly between trees and not soar in clear sky like an eagle does.

Raghuram Ekambaram