When my very first bylined article was printed over 35 years ago, a senior colleague whose command over English remains an inspiration to us remarked, "Not bad, lass, not bad at all." A fellow newbie, however, took umbrage on my behalf. "Not bad? It's very good!" she remonstrated. "Not bad means very good in English," he replied, with a twinkle in his eye. She was not very sure whether he was joking or serious, and many Indians today may not be either.
Lack of comprehension of a sentence comprising mostly words of no more than four letters but nationwide admiration for the polysyllabic eloquence of Shashi Tharoor encapsulates the dichotomy and dilemma of English in India today. Add to that countless social media reels advising people to substitute simple, short words with complicated ones to appear "more intelligent", and it seems Indians are labouring under the delusion that size matters in English.
It does not. Or should not. A thesaurus is not a prerequisite for eloquence. Our Anglo-Indian teachers dinned into us that short sentences and lucidity are always preferred over convoluted compositions with too many punctuation marks. They became very cross indeed if anyone showed off by inserting sesquipedalian prose into an essay. "A word to the wise is sufficient, my girl," my favourite teacher would admonish. Another was even more succinct: "Less is more."
My own acquired wisdom since then has been that when thoughts are clear, the words to express them are sparklingly simple. That goes for any language, of course, but particularly so for English with its penchant for understatement over hyperbole. That is why 'not bad' means 'very good'. Jargon and pedantic prose are just tools for those who seek to divert attention from the merit of their ideas to their knowledge of technical terms or the length of their words.
In that context, Tharoor is a victim of his own success. He tends to stick to the time-tested 'keep it simple' rules of English that I learnt in school, as he certainly does not lack erudition or clarity. But because a nation whose understanding of classic English has been steadily declining for decades was captivated by some long, arcane words he had probably uttered in a moment of school-boyish impishness, he is now India's undisputed Tsar of Sesquipedalia.
There is little doubt that many Indians' use of English today is very literal; irony, sarcasm and understatement are lost on many desi interlocutors. Definitions and usage have also changed, because English words are now often seen through the prism of Indian languages, which have different allusions and associations. So now, there are enthusiastic but poor imitators of what they think is Tharoorian articulation, and there are practitioners of purely perfunctory prose.
The welcome trend of translating more books in Indian languages into English adds another dimension to this curious divergence. Good translations retain the cultural nuances of the original works, which obviously precludes using familiar idioms of another language. So, Heart Lamp, the 2025 winner of the International Booker Prize translated from Kannada. uses English that bears no resemblance to, say, even the prose of the most revered Indian writers in English.
In fact, the English translation in that book echoes the way many Indians use it today. It is truly plain Indian English, as the language is just a medium of communication without any literary or even syntactic connection to the oeuvre of Chaucer or Shakespeare, Twain or Dickens, RK Narayan or Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie or Amitav Ghosh-or even that of the 'real' Tharoor. Never make the mistake of saying "not bad" in India now if you mean "very good".
Lack of comprehension of a sentence comprising mostly words of no more than four letters but nationwide admiration for the polysyllabic eloquence of Shashi Tharoor encapsulates the dichotomy and dilemma of English in India today. Add to that countless social media reels advising people to substitute simple, short words with complicated ones to appear "more intelligent", and it seems Indians are labouring under the delusion that size matters in English.
It does not. Or should not. A thesaurus is not a prerequisite for eloquence. Our Anglo-Indian teachers dinned into us that short sentences and lucidity are always preferred over convoluted compositions with too many punctuation marks. They became very cross indeed if anyone showed off by inserting sesquipedalian prose into an essay. "A word to the wise is sufficient, my girl," my favourite teacher would admonish. Another was even more succinct: "Less is more."
My own acquired wisdom since then has been that when thoughts are clear, the words to express them are sparklingly simple. That goes for any language, of course, but particularly so for English with its penchant for understatement over hyperbole. That is why 'not bad' means 'very good'. Jargon and pedantic prose are just tools for those who seek to divert attention from the merit of their ideas to their knowledge of technical terms or the length of their words.
In that context, Tharoor is a victim of his own success. He tends to stick to the time-tested 'keep it simple' rules of English that I learnt in school, as he certainly does not lack erudition or clarity. But because a nation whose understanding of classic English has been steadily declining for decades was captivated by some long, arcane words he had probably uttered in a moment of school-boyish impishness, he is now India's undisputed Tsar of Sesquipedalia.
There is little doubt that many Indians' use of English today is very literal; irony, sarcasm and understatement are lost on many desi interlocutors. Definitions and usage have also changed, because English words are now often seen through the prism of Indian languages, which have different allusions and associations. So now, there are enthusiastic but poor imitators of what they think is Tharoorian articulation, and there are practitioners of purely perfunctory prose.
The welcome trend of translating more books in Indian languages into English adds another dimension to this curious divergence. Good translations retain the cultural nuances of the original works, which obviously precludes using familiar idioms of another language. So, Heart Lamp, the 2025 winner of the International Booker Prize translated from Kannada. uses English that bears no resemblance to, say, even the prose of the most revered Indian writers in English.
In fact, the English translation in that book echoes the way many Indians use it today. It is truly plain Indian English, as the language is just a medium of communication without any literary or even syntactic connection to the oeuvre of Chaucer or Shakespeare, Twain or Dickens, RK Narayan or Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie or Amitav Ghosh-or even that of the 'real' Tharoor. Never make the mistake of saying "not bad" in India now if you mean "very good".
Reshmi Dasgupta
Senior Editor with The Economic Times