Hindi Dialogues, English and Chamku
iView Author: Vishesh Mankal (New Delhi, India)
Email: Vishesh_Mankal [at] hotmail [dot] com
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Hindi Dialogues, English and Chamku
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As an aspiring writer one thing I have always struggled with is writing dialogues in Hindi. Indeed my first few projects were devoid of any Hindi, even though the stories were based in or around Delhi. Writing English dialogue just came a lot easier to me for some reason. I assumed that the problem was just mine and it would go away with time and practice. But then I saw Kabeer Kaushik’s “Chamku” a few days ago. I hadn’t seen a good action film in god knows how long, so I went in expecting some well-choreographed action scenes and some serious grit along the way. Of course I got neither as the film was an action-film in only and had very little real action to speak of. Apart from that the one thing that caught my attention was how clumsy the dialogue writing really was. The writers (mysteriously unnamed) included so much English in the dialogues that I was ready to tear my hair out. So, that got me thinking; why is writing dialogues in Hindi so difficult? After a little dwelling upon, I came up with a few reasons that I have observed in my short time as a writer.
The first reason, in my opinion, is the fact that Hindi as a language is not pure. There are striking differences in dialects even between bordering states such as Haryana, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. There is a change is dialects even within some states such as Uttar Pradesh. A person living in the western part of Uttar Pradesh has a very different way of speaking that a person living in the eastern Uttar Pradesh, for example. Hindi changes form wherever it goes and most people use it however they see fit. The difference of dialects is very evident in Hindi news channels as well as more often than not the reporters speak in one dialect and the news readers in another. But with Hindi evolving differently from place to place, who can claim to know the right form of Hindi? This is where the problem comes for me. Even within Delhi, one person would say the same thing in a different way than I would and sometimes it is an uphill battle to get the actors to say the dialogues exactly as they have been written. The best approach, as they say, to writing dialogues is to spend some time with people that are similar in nature as one’s characters. But that luxury is not always affordable and more often than not most people end up writing from their memory and personal observations. A few films like “Omkara”, “Blue Umbrella” and “Khosla ka Ghosla” scored very high points in this area because their writers observed the minute nuances of the dialects where these films take place. The results, as everyone would agree, are astounding. But the sad fact is that not all full-time and aspiring writers, including myself, go that far in trying to be authentic simply because of either laziness or the thought that since Hindi is our mother tongue, we shouldn’t need to go anywhere to try and understand it. Sadly, that line is thinking is wrong because of the nature of Hindi.
Another thing that influences one’s writing style is one’s previous exposure to Hindi dialogues. Up until very recently, dialogues were extremely dramatic and poetic in films. Films like the Amitabh-starrer “Sharabi” are famous for their elaborate dialogues that are at times all but unnatural. A writer friend of mine is heavily influenced by this style and makes it a point to include similar dialogues in all his writings. Even though I have also grown up watching and adoring such films, my influences when it comes to writing are slightly more western. The reason for that is that the better part of my education happened abroad. That is not to say that my Hindi is poor, it’s just that I see dialogue as a means to communicate information in the simplest and the most naturalistic manner instead of breaking into poetry and hyperboles at every chance I get. But achieving this simplicity is what is difficult. To say “I hate you” in English is so much more natural than saying “Main tumse nafrat karta hoon”. That I think is because people in real life hardly ever talk in such extremes therefore it becomes doubly difficult to make such things appear natural when spoken in a film. Another thing is that such expressions are used more often in English than they are in Hindi. A lot of people dismiss this claim by saying that Hindi is just as expressionistic as English or as any other language. But the truth is that Hindi has become extremely diluted now; most people would find a way around saying things like “Main tumse nafrat karta hoon”. Indeed, a lot of people would simply go ahead and say it in English. The trick of the trade is to identify the people who would and separate them from people who wouldn’t. It is also worthwhile to note that sometimes signboards in places such as the India Habitat Centre simply write English words such are “research” or “archeology” using Hindi letters instead of finding the right translations. So, this begs the question that since Hindi is a mixture of so many languages, how can a writer balance his dialogues? The answer, once again, is observation, which eventually becomes instinct. I guess there comes a point where a good writer no longer has to think about balancing his words. This is where films like “Chamku”, “Apne” and “Welcome” failed for me; there was simply too much English in their dialogues where there was no need. It was obvious that the writers had very little knowledge of how people speak in real life.
Something that prevents Hindi writers from achieving that extra sense of realism is the censorship of profanity in our films as well. Sure, a few films have now begun to get past this rule, but most people in our country frown upon them. For most it is okay to use swear words as and when they please in real life, but it is a sin to include them in a film. Another curious thing to notice is that profanity is English is approved to a certain degree, even by the family going audience. Sure, some people might say that using swear words to express a character’s feelings is taking the easy way out and not coming up with something better, but one just cannot get around the fact that they would also make the character come closer to reality. Plus it is unfair to be living in a country that prides itself on being the biggest democracy in the world and then having to kneel in front of the censor board for such a trivial issue. Sometimes nothing but that particular slang word or swear word does justice to a scene and not being able to use it is quite frustrating. That does not mean I like swearing or using abusive language, it is just an issue of creativity. But slowly the issue is beginning to get resolved as both the censor board and the people have begun to take a more liberal stance towards profanity. Let us hope we can use this newfound power responsibly lest it gets taken away from us again.
Perhaps the greatest strength of Hindi is that it can adapt itself. That is why it is still surviving in a country that has more than a dozen official languages and hundreds of dialects. I suppose the fact that writing dialogues in Hindi is so difficult, thanks to reasons we have discussed here and others, most Hindi films have a separate dialogue writer attached to them. A few writers have now begun to deliver the whole package themselves, but their numbers are still dismal compared to their counterparts. Having written a few screenplays myself and translated some of them into full-fledged short films, I can safely say that writing Hindi dialogues is the toughest part of screenwriting and it requires a special kind of dedication to master. Let’s hope the writers of “Chamku” try better next time. Until then, let’s hope Hindi stabilizes itself so that writers can sleep better at night knowing their language of preference will not change by the time they wake up the next morning.
Here’s looking at you, Hindi.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
- Still majority of people take care that what kind of language they are using before elders and children and what language they use freely with friends, they will not use before family members. so that exclude universal use of abusive language in all the conditions. Its selectively used in real life also. People are always in minority who don’t care for these things and they are not seen with good eyes either.
- Censor board in India still has no control on a factor and that is- which age group is going to watch a film. So whole family is watching the same film though it may not be suitable for children.
For majority of people films are still the things which they all can enjoy together.
Audience who live alone or who go to watch a film alone, only these guys complain about a need of coloured language. Normal audience needs an optimized language in a film as it has been happening in hindi films since many years.
- There was always a subtle difference among the characters using Hindi in good hindi films. who ever has a doubt Please watch Naya Daur to know the point. Jeevan speaks different styled hindi, Dilip Kumar, Ajit and Vajyanti Mala etc speak in different way and Johny Walker speaks in different way. Ofcourse dialogue writers were profound people in all those big films made by aware producers and directors.
- Language problem has been coming because now directors have started handeling everything by themselves. For some talented people its fine but not all can handle story, screenplay, dialogues and screen play. Because when these things are handled by knowers and skilled people then a deeper impact and touch comes in the dialogues and screen play and work of a lone person may have many weaknesses because s/he becomes blind towards these weaknesses after a certain stage.
So when good writers handle dialogue department then its never a problem. we have to see Kabhi Haan kabhi na to know it.
Film is a team work and its writing departrment also needs a team and should not be handled by a single person only.
Past Record of many great films will show an agreement to this hypothesis.
- There is no problem with Hindi and there should not be any problem writing effective dialogues in hindi or in any language existing on earth if job is handled by those who know the language.
- This is not always necessary that Hindi of characters should differ and many stories can be handled in an optimized Hindi and there is no necessity to bring in the slangs.
- Whoever feels any difficulty in writing hindi dialogues, please contact PFC, here many people can write effective dialogues in Hindi.
instinct does kick in after a point. but i have been party to enough film writing exercises to know (and believe) that writing dialogue especially requires the same patience, tenacity, research, eye to detail everytime, whether its your first film or your 42nd. because of, as you have rightly pointed out, the multitude of dialects / types of hindi spoken across the country. characters are MADE on paper sometimes purely by dint of how they say what they do. it takes care of half the actor’s and the director’s job. and as writers its our prerogative to be able to do that.
i think
@Devashish
That’s a very good point about how good characters are defined on paper and then added on by the actors and the director and yes good writers should always be aware of that.
is samay bollywood main ek poori nayi jamat aayi hui hai
khaasiyat ye hai ki inhone char saal abroad main bitayein hain
aur chaar hollywood ki filmein dekh li hain
aur bollywood ko gaali dekar khush hone lage
ki ye sab jaante hain ki kaise film banayi jaati hai
aur bollywood main sab anpadh hain
.
kisne kaha hindi main dialouge likhana kathin hai
haasil bani, sehar bani, omkara bani, maqbool bani
sab jabardast filmein hain
.
hindi main ‘i hate you’ ko likhana mushkil hai
woh isliye nahien ki hindi bhasa kamjor hai
isliye kyonki koi hindustaani apne dushman ko bhi nahien kahta ki main tumse nafrat karta hoon
.
agar samvad main vastvikta ka put dena hai
to woh likho jo hindustaani bolta hai
.
na, kahenge yahi ki samvad main vastvikta nahin hai
samvad banawati hain
aur khud, vastvikta ke naam per dooshre desh ki jaban ka anuvad karenge
.
hindi main ‘i hate you’ ka anuvad mushkil hai !
to anuvad karte kyon ho
kissi sehar ki gali main ek din bitakar dekho
pata chal jaayega ki
ek hi bhav ko vyakkt karne ke hindi main 1760 tareeke hain
jo pasand ho chun lena
Here’s a post written by Abbas Tyrewala way back in 2000 about writing in Hindi : http://abbas-tyrewala.sulekha.com/blog/post/2000/01/so-who-speaks-hindi.htm
Thanks Vishesh for your post. Made very interesting reading. Thanks also to Pratik for the link to that very interesting article written by Abbas Tyrewala.
Devashish, Vishrant and RK have also made some very good points.
I face the same problem while writing my screenplays but at least in my first drafts I have stopped bothering whether my dialogues come out in Hindi or English. I write the dialogues in whatever first language comes to my mind and worry about changing them later. I have noticed that some characters that I write tend to have their dialogues automatically in Hindi more often than others. So if my character is say a factory worker, my automatic dialogue language become Hindi and when I am writing dialogues for a CEO it changes back into English mode…I have stopped worrying about this now and just go with the flow…
Hindi is not a dialect……and for dialogues to sound believable, they should be spoken in a particular dialect right?
Take Hollywood for instance, since you brought the matter of using English…..Characters in Fargo speak with a highlander accent, which would translate into a dialect in India if you were to base your story in non urban settings. That’s precisely what Omkara did, IMHO…..
@DazedandConfused
Bang on, man! That is what I do as well. I write the first draft to get the story together and get a gist of how it is being told and the dialogues are usually refined in later drafts.
@Pratik
Thanks for the link. Very insightful.
@Vishrant
Main bhi Hindi ka bahot bada bhakt hoon aur mera hamesha yehi prayas rehta hain ki Hindi ki shudhta ko sada barkarar rakhoon. Yehi karan hain ki maine yeh article likha, kyonki main Hindi ke vaastavik roop ko dhoondna aur samajhna chahta hoon, jo ki is samay bahot katthin sabit ho raha hain. Main waise jaankar prasan hua ke aap jaise Hindi ke prati nishtawaan log abhi bhi hain. Kripya mere article ko padkar yeh na samajhye ke Hindi se mujhe koi apati hain. Hindi meri bhi matra bhasha hain aur uska main bahot samaan karta hoon.
@avn
Certainly Hindi is not a dialect. It’s just that Hindi has a lot of dialects; more so than English, I guess. And the nuances of certain dialects in Hindi, like the one used in Omkara, come out more in the usage of words rather than the pronunciation, I think.