I was about to write a review on SpiceJet, but my mind is too consumed on the incidents that happened on the plane to recollect the actual details of the trip. So thought of writing this post instead.
You guessed it, this is going to touch one of the sensitive complexes grown by a lot of Indians. If you don't like to dabble with this issue, you might be offended by what I am going to say. On a side note, this is not going to be criticizing the way Indians speak, but the way they try to improve themselves and stroke their inferiority complexes.
I was on two SpiceJet flights on the same day. It's not unusual, but the incidents were very much the opposite. I was traveling with a buddy of mine, a British national. As we were watching the safety instructions and listening to the attendant explaining the actions, we couldn't understand most of the words or sentences he was trying to get us understand. As a half Indian, even I couldn't understand his "accent" as you may call it. After this dreadful outpouring of half words, all the Brit could say was "wow! so this is what happens to a beautiful language and a sweet accent when you have call centers teaching you how to speak in English". I couldn't agree less with him as I had the exact same thought in my mind. All I said back was "yeah I guess that's why brits or the americans don't like calls from Indian call centers".
We weren't surprised by any grammatical errors or the Indian accent. It was the way he was trying to sound British. He was trying to achieve this by ignoring the phonetic sounds that would evidently prove he is India. Like when trying to say "to fasten your seat belts, please insert the buckle like this" he was saying "to fas n yo set bel, pl (couldn't figure out) inse the buk like this". So who could understand this if even a native speaker can't? He was speaking perfectly fine with his colleagues on the plane in perfect English with the Indian accent.
This lead to a pleasant conversation between myself and my buddy on how this happened and our past experiences like this whenever we had to go through India. I myself do have a mild accent on the letter "r" even after leaving this country more than a decade ago and I don't feel the necessity to ignore the letter whenever I speak in English. So we were going through the past experiences which were not as bad as this one, but we did find a pattern in it. Whenever Indians talk to a foreigner they tend to hide their accent and go towards being non-intelligible. When it comes to other Indians, they tend to ignore the accent. There were only very few we encountered that did not mind their accent.
Myself (could hardly understand or speak any Indian language anymore) or any native English speaker never really mind the accent powdered on English. In fact a lot of the native speakers I converse with say they actually like accents on English because it adds a little flavor to a dry language it is. So is it the inferiority complex that makes an Indian do such silly things? Maybe. I can always sense the complex creeping up on an individual when I am communicating my requests or answering to a demand or question. I believe it comes to down to the fear of being "lesser" than the other person who has almost no accent or a completely different accent like Africans or Singaporeans. Oops I can't include Singaporeans here because they have the power to stoke more inferiority complexes in an Indian than just languages and accents.
Lets talk about this closet skeleton in a lot of Indians' minds. Why does everything you do have to be prejudiced and taken up as a measure of your status in the society? Really, it's just how well you communicate your thoughts rather than how cool you sound when you try to do so. Please Indians, learn if not fast, at least gradually. Nobody cares if you can talk like a Brit or an American. It doesn't matter because you will no matter what, always look Indian. Stop being slaves to all the societal barriers you created in the name of culture and start acting like normal men and women.
If being normal without the feelings of "who's the master", "who's the slave", "I am inferior to the rest of the world not only because of skin color but also because I can't talk like them" is not possible, you will never be equal to them even if they think you are. I think you will never feel equal to everybody else in this world for quite a long time. Gladly, prove me wrong if you can.
