Doubtless many readers saw the recent article in the New York Times, profiling Katherine Russell Rich, author most recently of a book called Dreaming in Hindi — a memoir of a year spent in Rajasthan, learning Hindi.
Something about the article in the Times bugged me, starting with the following passage:
One store owner insists in English that she is not actually speaking Hindi; when Ms. Rich explains, in Hindi, that she studied the language for some time in Rajasthan, he retorts, in English, “They don’t speak Hindi in Rajasthan.†(This happens not to be true.)
When Ms. Rich returned to New York from abroad, she spontaneously spoke Hindi to a friend of a friend. “He told me that when I spoke Hindi to him, it was like a body blow,” Ms. Rich said. “I think to Indians, sometimes it feels like I’m eavesdropping on a private conversation, like I’m breaking the fourth wall.” (link)
Wait, couldn’t it also be that the people Rich has been accosting, taxi drivers and convenience store clerks, might simply find this persistent American annoying, and have refused to speak Hindi with her mainly to make her go away? Lady, I’m sorry if your being in New York means your newly-acquired Hindi is going to start getting rusty. But I got a job to do, and that involves speaking English to patrons as I sell them stuff, not teaching you how to pronounce “lajawab” correctly. Next in line, please?
The question has to be asked: why does Katherine Russell Rich want to learn to speak Hindi? Is it to communicate with Hindi speakers while living in India? That would be a perfectly fine reason, indeed, an admirable one. But I suspect that sadly her real desire was to a) get paid for writing a book where she can talk all about her Hindi lessons and her impressions of Rajasthan, only to b) promptly move back to Manhattan, where she’ll irk Hindi speaking New Yorkers with her persistent demands that they speak Hindi with her?
Another annoyance in the article is the presumption that people refuse to acknowledge a white woman who speaks Hindi because we desis like to gossip about Americans in our secret language:
To some people from India, Ms. Rich learned, it is insulting to be addressed in anything other than English, a language of the privileged. And for some immigrants, domain over a language unfamiliar to most Americans must feel like one of the few riches they can claim. (link)
I really don’t know where the author of the article got this idea. (Why not ask an actual Indian, Hindi-speaker before making the speculative statement that “domain over a language unfamiliar to most Americans must feel like one of the few riches they can claim”?)
Finally, there is the obligatory dis on second-generation, “heritage” students who take Hindi classes at their universities:
“A lot of Indians who were born here or moved here when they were very small want to rediscover the language,†he said. (Ms. Rich said that she had overlapped with such students at New York University, and that many were already proficient in the language, less interested in their heritage and more interested in an easy A.) (link)
I’ll have you know, Ms. Rich, that most second gen, Indian-American college students do not take Hindi for this reason. I myself took Hindi at Cornell, and my professor gave me a “B” in intermediate Hindi (I deserved it, but it still smarts: certainly not an “easy A”).
In fact, most Indian-American college students actually take Hindi to meet, and flirt with, other Indian-American college students. So there.Katherine Russell Rich has also produced a short, promotional YouTube video related to the book and this New York Times article, which as of this writing has had all of 127 hits, even with a link from the New York Times:
If you weren’t annoyed by Katherine Russell Rich before, I suspect you may be by now.
Katherine Russell Rich also has an amusing, but not exactly wonderful, first-person story about making out with a New York City fireman in an elevator here.
i’m surprised she didn’t start telling people “mujhe slumdog bohut acchi lagi”
eh. part of my discomfort is that i’ve never thought of indians as exotic or an anthropological expedition. there are notable exceptions — mike tully, wendy doniger and VS naipaul are non-indians who’ve written intelligently on the subject [opinions can be intelligent despite being controversial]. but to get back to why madam frootcake was surprised at the offence people took…
mostly one comes across people like one character who insisted on dissecting my name, eventually leaving me with this gem, “I went down this journey when i met this beautiful person in Shoppers*. i saw her name was shabnam and i asked her name. it meant ‘the first dew drops on the petals of the rose’. and i was entranced…” the rest of the conversation was like that. i am thinking poor shabnam probably wants to move the line at her counter in stead of sit like a chimp in a cage being prodded. and this guy was a total noodle. i’m sure he saw a lot of action with all the looney-tunes hippie stuff he was coming up with but i had mental images of taking a cleaver to his head repeatedly. that’s why i feel weird if someone thinks they should be rewarded because they are doing the equivalent of dressing a monkey in a tutu and showing it around.
dont get me wrong peeps. i had this census-taker surprise me once by breaking into hindi. she was tibetan-canadian and had been born in dharamsala. but there is something about the tone. she didnt expect a reward for speaking a couple of choice phrases – and in restrospect she was putting down some of the defences that come with being a door to door canvasser. god knows the kind of weirdos she met in her daily work. it was precious and we actually bonded very well.
anyhow, my point was that Rich comes across like a monkey in a tutu. one can throw coins at it but it is neither flattering to the human nor to the culture that backs him.
*a pharmacy chain in canada
on another note, i think she tooted after saying, “not really” in the vid.
I’m a heritage language learner of Tamil and I’ve taught elementary Tamil to heritage and non-heritage language learners at a university-level. I really feel like slapping anyone who still insists on repeating these tired stereotypes. EVERYONE has issues, and it’s really frustrating to see time and time again how some students’ issues are marked and others’ aren’t because they’re seen as the norm.
We had a somewhat-related, interesting thread about this at ptr last year.
Seems like she could try to be a little more natural about how she strikes up conversations in Hindi.
I have to admit, now that I’ve learned enough Hindi, my husband and I enjoy being able to talk to each other in public without anyone knowing what we’re saying.
I have to admit, now that I’ve learned enough Hindi, my husband and I enjoy being able to talk to each other in public without anyone knowing what we’re saying.
Yes, my wife and I do that too. But it’s one thing to be able to communicate private thoughts in Hindi or other Indian languages in public places in the U.S., and another to presume that Hindi speakers might be resisting Katherine Rich because they want to preserve that privilege.
A simpler explanation is this: most people speak to communicate, not for the narcissistic experience of showing that they know a language. If a stranger speaks to me for the latter reason, it’s quite possible I wouldn’t be interested in participating.
This woman is an idiot. There are tens of thousands (the article puts the number at 35,000) of Hindi speakers in NY. There are even linguistic organizations dedicated to bringing Hindi speakers together. But she insist on finding the working class Hindi speakers. Why? Because poverty and immigration are sexy. Financially successful brown people are not.
Hey, white girl, leave them cabs alone.
“A simpler explanation is this: most people speak to communicate, not for the narcissistic experience of showing that they know a language.”
That’s a really good point.
Between this woman and the Look At This F’ing Hipster blog to book deal…(abusive, illiterate, intolerant, long and obscure rant)
While Dreaming in Hindi, she seems to have picked up an Aunty accent+head maneuvers. Check out 0:40.
Also, the only Indian name in the article is misspelled:
Dude’s name is Sridhar.
I am disappointed that the NYT so casually dismisses the conclusion of a learned expert Dr. S.N. Sridhar in favor of the anecdotal conclusions of Ms.Rich. Dr. Sridhar, founder of the India Studies Center at SUNY Stonybrook deserves more respect. But then what does he know compared to an exotic traveller who went to Rajasthan to learn Hindi? Worse the editor can’t even get Dr. Sridhar’s name right. It’s Sridhar
not SribharWhat an irritating, condescending, stupid woman! Every second of this video was annoying. Why does she call the shopkeeper a Romeo? Flirting seemed to be the last thing on his mind. Arrrgggh!!! Why even give her the air time? Yes I know, annoying things are fun to blog about, but does she deserve this free publicity?
To khoofi – yes it is all about tone. Encounters I enjoyed were when two different Korean gentleman approached me in two separate places, one in the public library and one at a ski slope, and purely based on my features, asked if i spoke Tamil because they were investigating the similarities between Korean and Tamil. As it happens, I do speak a little Tamil and we had an interesting time throwing words at each other. If this woman had approached me with her smug head wagging I would slap her face.
as a recent college grad let me tell you taking Hindi at the college level is hard, i didn’t speak the language at home (we spoke Marathi). but it did also help me meet Indian girls…..
Well that’s rich Ms. Rich.
I was looking forward to picking up this book after reading about it on Language Log, but, dear lord, that video…
I tried really hard, but I couldn’t make it through the entire video. She lost me when she showed the photo of her in the hot pink sari. Eesh.
And I didn’t like the dig at “heritage” students either.
When I fumble along in pidgin Hindi or Tamil, the reactions are invariably positive — people appreciate the effort to engage them on their own terms, and they usually try to teach me more of the language. Ms. Rich’s weird experiences seem more the result of her weird personality than an Indian reaction to a white person speaking Hindi.
Ms.Rich is nothing but a confused elite white liberal who means well, but doesn’t know better. There are many of them in the west who think they are making a difference, but in the end only make things worse.
But some of the outrage here is kind of funny. Maybe it’s me, but there are bigger issues in the desi community in the west that we should be worried about. But sometimes when it comes to minor issues like this. I wonder if Ms.Rich was black or hispanic american if there would be the same outrage over her speaking hindi.
Yeah, I just watched the video and now I’m infuriated:
5:35: “Dreaming in Hindi is a book about extreme danger as well – about a year when 2000 people were slaughtered in Gujarat, not that far from where I lived, in the town of Udaipur.”
Right, uh huh, way to make it sound like YOU were PERSONALLY under threat or even POTENTIALLY under threat, or had ANYTHING TO DO with the people who were killed. Sure, take all of the context out of what happened for your self-serving purposes – to make it look like you were somehow…
whatever. screw you. you’re so not worth my anger.
Dear Convenience Store Uncleji and 80-year old Geezer Bhaiya,
You have my undying respect and support. Keep up the good work and charmingly grouchy, unimpressed demeanor.
Love, Brimful
I think Rich explains it best herself:
I don’t think that applies to all people who learn new languages, but it certainly seems to be applicable to Rich.
I love this. And I would like to know how to say it in Hindi ;0)
well, I’m a Westerner and I have been learning Hindi for long and her Hindi -after a whole year in Rajasthan!!- doesn not impress me at all, I can hardly understand her accent. I can understand some of her doubts becuase there are actually some Indians who are not at ease with Hindi (not all Indians speak Hindi as a native language afterall), there might be may reasons behind this, but I think this happens with every language…try to speak a bad English in England, no one will have mercy on you! LOL Said this, I think she was looking to do something -according to her- very impressing and unusual and she’s looking for compliments (and gets annoyed when she does not have people complimenting her). The best compliment you can get in India is taking a rickshaw and being quoted a local price straight away! I bet she rarely suceeded in that!
Ugh, now I’ve seen the video. She’s insufferable! And I agree with you, flavia…her accent is awful. It’s even worse than the “Britisher” Hindi accent my husband does to make fun of people like her.
for someone who lived in india for a year, she should know that all indians do not speak hindi – like the cab driver, who tells her that he is from punjab, where people speak punjabi, not hindi. and chances are that the majority of taxi drivers she came across were not native hindi speakers.
btw, the gent minding the store front is not the store keeper, he is a artist of some sort, probably the author’s friend, who i have seen in nyc indian art gatherings; maybe the cab guy is her friend, too.
So is Hindi the only other language except English that she speaks? It would explain how obnoxious she’s being about her “learning a new language”. Does she not realize that most educated people in the world speak more than one language? Call me when she can speak 4-5 languages and actually say lassi right, then we can talk.
as much as i try try try to genuinely empathize with you people and understand the countless microaggressions with which your constantly assaulted, it appears even after all these years the gap between us is simply too much to bridge. i can only conclude whats really bothering you is that the earnest ms rich has unwittingly lifted the exotic veil u wear covering that which you’d prefer remain unseen. i now wonder what you all say about me behind my back
and yeah, we desis take hindi classes b/c we want some easy A’s: Anita, Aishwarya…
Ms. Rich is an idiot and NYT’s journalist should have known better – or maybe she’s just as clueless as Mr. Rich. This whole “I’m so cool and enlightened to go to India, and wow, I leaned Hindi, and whadda-you-know: I’m White AND I learned Hindi (double WOW!) so now I can get a book deal, and wow, I am so pleased with myself and don’t realize how totally condescending I am being towards people of Indian descent” thing sucks. Argh… It’s sad that her book will sell well because Oprah picked it.
wow, she seems ridiculous.
Oprah picked the book?
Look at what Suketu Mehta says about it; maybe we’re missing some charm and intelligence in the book that’s not conveyed by her imo disastrously annoying video –
“Katherine Russell Rich’s new book, Dreaming in Hindi: Coming Awake in Another Language, is a riveting memoir about an American woman who spends a year in Rajasthan learning Hindi. The book illuminates the truth that when we learn a language, we learn an entire culture. One of the best foreign observers of contemporary India, Rich’s gaze on the country is witty, empathetic, and intimate.†—Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found.
a glimpse of that back, and all i can think about — God, how can I be this guy’s boss?
“The book illuminates the truth that when we learn a language, we learn an entire culture.”
lol wut? Truism much?
Also, what is it about her situation that scores her a book deal? Every fifth college student I know has gone abroad for a year to study another language.
This sounds SO familiar! I personally despise all the spin-offs of Under the Tuscan Sun- especially the film- makes me want to beat that woman with uncooked manicotti. I remember being a heritage speaker in Italian class- it’s no easier for us, either- all those family things to unlearn, all that being lumped together-“you Italians”- expected to wax euphoric over Italian restaurants that serve food we wouldn’t even feed to dogs. All of a sudden seeing your family region turned into some sort of uber-safely exotic destination by clueless Americans who buy the houses we wish we could afford now because many of us couldn’t afford them then– one of the reasons we immigrated.
you always had my back, demi
I find the language thing funny. I speak 4 European languages and what used to be decent Arabic. Where’s MY book deal?
If she thinks that spending a year in a non-European culture is a feat- considering her money, etc., maybe she should try being married there and learning how to be a reasonable, working daughter-in-law- no English possible. What would she want- a parade, perhaps?
I’m seriously confused about what this statement actually means. Is it the notion that we’re holding on to our languages as a sort of cultural effort to thwart non-Hindi speakers? Or is it the idea that our language is all we have left?
I admit I do sometimes talk to my husband in Tamil and/or Hindi in public, partly because we don’t want to be understood. (We’ve also started talking in Hindi around our toddler who understands English and Tamil too well for us to keep things from him, lol). But I’m still not sure that fits with the author’s larger point.
She is on to something with English speakers who refuse to communicate in Hindi (or other Indian languages). I’ve noticed this several times in travels to India. The employees in the fancier stores always respond in English, even if you don’t address them in that language. Apparently, they’re trained to always talk to customers in English.
This is true to an extent though. Indians dissing other Indians – ये सदियों से चली आ रही हमारी परमà¥à¤ªà¤°à¤¾ है
I found the article mildly amusing when I read it, not hot and othered (TM) as I guess is fashionable these days. I give her credit for taking the effort to learn Hindi, and her observations about Indians revelling in the use of Hindi or other native tongues for private communication in public places, as well as being reluctant to even speak in Hindi are not inaccurate. I guess the idea that a non Indian dare make these observations is galling enough to merit a post.
I wasn’t really offended until this:
Ms. Rich said that she had overlapped with such students at New York University, and that many were already proficient in the language, less interested in their heritage and more interested in an easy A.)
Great, we’re now being slandered, en masse, in the pages of the Times by the hearsay of a self-proclaimed expert.
I’ve known many friends who took classes in their ancestral language and its something I’m thinking of doing myself. I doubt very much that the majority of college-going South Asian students thought this was their best option for an easy A. There are too many other options for those easy As, and most of us have/had too little room for any elective classes to waste them on something that wasn’t absolutely interesting to us.
It’s not what she says, it how she says it. and that she expects to be complimented and celebrated for what millions of people do every day.
A real deal
Prof. Rodney F Moag
Kerala is my Second Home
This was very cringe-worthy, and she exemplifies the exotification of the Orient by Westerners. I believe that the youtube video, that there was bits that were staged, and she’s taking things out of context. I don’t appreciate how she claims that the older man regards her as ugly, and that there “was an element of danger” in India.
She needs to go to Australia and practice her Hindi on those Lebanese kids who are beating our people up, and see what danger is!
Also, I hate how she shakes her head FOB-style. I know this one white girl here in Boston who’s marrying one of my peers. She, too, has been to India, and now she thinks that we must all pat her on her back. In public, this girl does the head-shake and (cringe), she speaks with an Indian accent.
There are so many double-standards here, and even lies are propagated. I don’t, for one second, appreciate how she regards Indians taking Hindi at NYU as looking for an easy A. She’s clearly angry at Indians or has a vendetta. Most Indians do NOT speak Hindi as their first language, and many DON’T even speak it at all! In the south, this is especially true! Even some Norhterners can’t speak Hindi. In Punjab, they DON’T. I remember going to Amritsar, and mostly they do, but some folks (rustic types) don’t!
Ms. Rich has good intentions, but she reminds me of the Daily Show, and how they went to Iran last week, and they exoticized and demonized in a fake/sarcastic fashion. The only difference is that she wasn’t sarcastic, but just ignorant.
Oh yeah: Manju’s “yeah, we desis take hindi classes b/c we want some easy A’s: Anita, Aishwarya…” was brilliant! I’d settle with some B’s even: Bhumika, Bhama, etc.
^^^ Agree with Rahul
Ok, so the woman does seem a bit off in her youtube video. But I’m just not getting where all the vitriol is coming from. Maybe she once heard the language and really liked the sound of it. I live in an area with a lot of Latinos-I speak in Spanish quite often not because they don’t know english but just that I like the language and want to speak it. I don’t see what’s so bad about that.
Also, hasn’t Rakhi Sawant in India called out bollywood stars and directors for always speaking in English instead of hindi or whatever regional language? Rich is not being entirely inaccurate when she says a lot of Indians look down on the “vernaculars.” Hell, I’m guilty of it at times.
That said, I highly doubt I’d find her book interesting.
Also, I hate how she shakes her head FOB-style. I know this one white girl here in Boston who’s marrying one of my peers. She, too, has been to India, and now she thinks that we must all pat her on her back. In public, this girl does the head-shake and (cringe), she speaks with an Indian accent.
What’s wrong with the head shake and the Indian accent?
I was so exasperated by this narcissistic, safari colonialist; her blithe assumption that learning Hindi in India entitles her to conversation with any and all Indians in NYC at the time and on terms of her choosing; her assumption that immigrants in their workplace have nothing better to do than cater to her orientalist fantasy; her utterly gratuitous sideswipe at desi American students; and the fact that all this earned her a book deal and a NYT puff piece; that I haven’t yet dared watch the video, for fear of losing it completely. I’m told her Hindi is actually quite poor, to boot.
But to address an issue raised upthread, yes, the article does say that the encounters in the video are “recreated” i.e. staged versions of actual encounters she claims to have had. So to the commenter who believes s/he recognized one of the characters as someone on the NYC desi gallery scene, you are probably right. Colonialists always find local allies and enablers — that’s one of the reasons why colonialism is so insidious.
Folks, this is a promotional video. The people in it are not doing or saying things ‘in real life’ – they’re all acting to a script intended to confirm the premises of her book. Come on!, don’t get taken in!
And if she comes off sounding a little offensive, it is also part of the same plan designed to publicize and thus sell the book. (‘There’s no such thing as “bad” publicity’)
But on more serious issues, I actually find myself agreeing with her reasoning for why Hindi speakers abroad hesitate to talk to her in Hindi.
The ‘easy A’ is a piece of campus folklore – not unique to Hindi learners – a white female graduate student who was learning Chinese told me the same thing about Chinese-American undergrads. And the ‘I know enough to talk to cab drivers’ bit is also fairly standard. Since most ‘middle class’ ethnic Americans won’t speak to a white person in their home country language for the reason she mentions, it’s only cab drivers and corner store owners – captive audiences – who might agree even in theory – and even they usually won’t have extended conversations, as she shows (although the people in her video are all acting). A white female undergrad who was learning Arabic once approached me to try her Arabic – but was disappointed when I told her I wasn’t Arab and didn’t know the language (I do look ‘Arab’ though, she was right on that – Arabs have made the same mistake). I asked her how well she had managed to learn the language, and she said, completely unselfconsciously, ‘Oh, quite well actually. I can talk simple things with cab drivers’.
Fair enough, and I concede that some of her statements are not entirely inaccurate. I think I’m more perplexed than hot and bothered (TM).
Mostly, I think it’s time the world stopped trying so hard to get its India on.
The first lines of Hindi she spoke on the video would have made any 80s British Raj impersonator in Bollywood proud. “Hum Moti hain”, she says, with the soft t making it “pearl” instead of “fat”.
That’s when I knew she was a “narcissistic, safari colonialist” with “orientalist fantasies” who felt “entitled to conversation with any and all Indians in NYC”. Siddharta, are you sure you haven’t already lost it completely?
oh man! This was unbearable…. but she was so bad it was funny (or maybe I was laughing because I was embarassed to even see her speak Hindi?). Cringe. cringe. She seems like she is trying to learn Hindi to have something to write about, rather than because she truly wants to use the language… and why is she accosting every Indian on the streets?
I hope I don’t sound so embarrassing when I speak Hindi… When I see people like her speak Hindi, my first thought is always “Oh God! I hope I don’t sound like THAT” I bet she did the AIIS program too.. are there any other Hindi programs in Jaipur? Anyone know?I don’t know why she thinks she is so special… I think these days over a hundred (atleast) American University students are going to Jaipur either for a summer program or a year program to study Hindi.
Regarding the stereotypes about heritage learners, at my classes in Syracuse U, there were a lot of language learners, many of whom had been exposed to the language to different degrees. For example, some could understand the gist of what was being said to them, but not be able to respond, etc. I don’t think any of them took it to get an easy A, but rather because they wanted to learn the language.
I also use Hindi a lot with my boyfriend or friends when I want to say something no one else (hopefully) will understand, but as of yet, I haven’t eavesdropped on any exciting conversations.. 😉
“When I fumble along in pidgin Hindi or Tamil, the reactions are invariably positive — people appreciate the effort to engage them on their own terms, and they usually try to teach me more of the language. Ms. Rich’s weird experiences seem more the result of her weird personality than an Indian reaction to a white person speaking Hindi.”
I agree with that too! If I speak Hindi I usually get a lot of positive response… (I also don’t go around going “Look at Me! I speak HINDIIIIIII!”) I think this comment is totally right about her weird personality affecting her experiences..
I need to repeat what others have said above that the youtube video is an over-dramatisation in the bollywood ishtyle and is not helping her cause of selling the book with the ABD crowd:) That said, most Hindi speakers would appreciate a foreigner learning the language and talk back to them in Hindi. So I don’t agree with the following in the article, since that would be seldom the case. The one thing that could be said is that since it is rare to see a visible foreigner speak in Hindi, some Hindi speakers may make a doubletake if spoken toin Hindi, before they catch on.
I want to take a frying pan and beat her on the head with it! Even the title sounds borrowed from “Dreaming in Cuban”
Aaaannnd the award for most roundabout way to say “Uncle Tom” goes to….