This is the story of a breed of young Indians that was not born into a cosmopolitan culture but has the determination to not just earn its bread in the emergent global village but also to imbibe its culture. Varun’s proficiency in English gives him access to information as well as keeps him in touch with contemporary ebbs and flows in art and philosophy. David Devadas looks at the vibrant power of today’s youth.

Varun

In his spare time, Varun Rana sometimes writes poetry. Here are a couple of lines he came up with, off the cuff, just last week: "Would that words could slaves be made, I’d have them return the farewell you bade." Varun may not, at least yet, be a Vikram Seth but then he is only 21. And, he has already mastered the rhythm, rhyme and metre of English. He reads voraciously and was engaged in avid conversation with authors at the launch of Penguin’s anthology of new writers a few weeks ago, easily conversing with persons like the director of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation.

It is not just age that marks Varun as different from Vikram Seth, though. Social background does too, and that is what makes his felicity with the English language remarkable. Varun was born in a middle-class family that spoke only Punjabi and Hindi at home. He was admitted to Naval Public School in Delhi but, for the first few years there, his malapropisms routinely had his classmates in splits and his teachers in fits of temper. One day, he proudly answered his teacher: "He suicided, ma’am," while discussing a short story character who had committed suicide. And he once informed his classmates, "I got wet in rain tomorrow." He was flummoxed by yesterday and tomorrow, both being translations of kal.

One day, Varun’s teacher told him he must sit next to a classmate called Nisha Rachel George so that she could correct his English. That, along with the love for reading that Varun discovered soon after, began his journey towards perfect diction. A graduate now of the National Institute of Fashion Technology, he works for the reputed fashion designer, Rahul Khanna, and is perfectly at home dealing with upper-crust clients.

Varun’s story is representative of much more than the tens of thousands of young Indians who have mastered enough English for back-office operations. Nor is it just a vignette of an integrative India striving to communicate across the land – although it was a Malayalee classmate who devoted herself patiently to helping her Punjabi friend. This is the story of a breed of young Indians that was not born into a cosmopolitan culture but has the determination to not just earn its bread in the emergent global village but also to imbibe – even mould – its culture. Varun’s proficiency in English gives him access to information as well as keeps him in touch with contemporary ebbs and flows in art and philosophy.

The difference between this generation and an earlier one is that young people like Varun do not have the inferiority complex that many of their grandparents had while showing off the language of the Raj. Varun would not be satisfied if he were merely able to follow file notings as a clerk. Far from it. His command over English opens up all sorts of fascinating vistas.

Indeed, Varun is as delighted with opportunities to practise the Bengali he learnt from his room mate while the two were at NIFT. He preens whenever a Bengali praises his pronunciation.

Nor does he shy away from practising the Malayalee phrases he picked up from a girlfriend (not the one who had some years before honed his English). Not only that, he follows Sanskrit better than most and is in his element holding forth on the finer points of Hindustani classical music, the nuances of the Mahabharata or the philosophical underpinnings of the Vedas.

As the nation becomes more vibrant today, more young people from beyond the halls of class dare to indulge their intellect. Varun represents this immensely confident generation of ordinary Indians, not only bursting with more curiosity than perhaps any earlier generation but also brimming with the gumption to leave no stone unturned in the search for fulfilment.

This pursuit of excellence could bring tremendous vitality to national development. A similar trend during the reign of Elizabeth I (Shakespeare was a small town boy) put England on the road to building the world’s most powerful empire ever. Stultified systems give way to innovation when those beyond the pale of privilege unshackle their minds. They have no stake in the status quo, and have seen the rotten underbelly of society.

Would that the Varuns of this generation never get discouraged.

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