One of our pastimes with friends from the Bhojpuri belt was to make fun of Bollywood actors trying to deliver dialogues in Bhojpuri.
Although I tried speaking the dialect - I had earned a reputation of passing off as a “ purabiya” in JNU - it is unlikely I succeeded. It wasn’t unusual to find a person whose father was a seasonal single crop farmer in Bihar or the mother was a widow who earned livelihood by tailoring ladies’ garments in Punjab or the family was a subsistence pig rearing partner with a local NGO in the mountains of Nagaland.īefore I meander off, here I’m just remembering my association with Bhojpuri speaking boys and girls from Bihar, a rich experience in terms of culture and language. Although at times accused to be an elite institution, the fact remains that students came to this university from far flung places and from very humble underprivileged backgrounds. There are a number of experiences I can recount that are replete with humor and insight.įor one, it is in JNU that I encountered students from all over India. The onset of winter somehow brings to my mind fond memories about Jawaharlal Nehru University, my alma mater where I completed my Masters in Linguistics.
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