One of the Anandshala facilitators during a conversation proudly shared that people say “you don’t sound Laman”. For her, not sounding x is a marker of upward movement socially. Like in Shaw’s Pygmalion or P L Deshpande’s Fulrani, what does it take for a flower girl to pass off as an elite lady?
She grew up in the district headquarter, not in the Tanda. Her Marathi is learnt as a Parisar Bhasha among various marathi speaking people, not as a language of instruction or a subject in school like her students. For a person visiting from Pune, the keeper of ‘standard Marathi’ she will sound rural or not (so called) higher caste. Markers such as न and ण would be obvious to them. Those she did not learn by osmosis in her semi-urban environment, but only in the school. When we look at language as performative in that sense – where and how one learns it makes or breaks the performance.
Why do people find the need to pass; what harm such compulsions rooted in social structures cause; and what can we do personally and as a society to not put that burden on them is a conversation for another day.
devayani tirthali 