Padma Shri awardee and veteran journalist, Mrinal Pande served as an editor of a major Hindi daily until 2009. She was also appointed as a chairperson of Prasar Bharti and has been working with various television and print media outlets. She speaks with Guardin 20 on her relationship with Hindi and her mother, Shivani, who was her mentor.
Q. Being a veteran journalist, what are the prime differences you see between journalism of the past and present?
A. Primarily, technology has changed the scene completely and mainstream journalism is now almost flooded with social media. It has changed the shape of media. It has changed the style of media reporting. It has also given new vantage points. It has created room for half-truths and unverified reports. All of this is happening so fast that one can’t take a moral stand on it. But I think that in a year or so when things will clear up a bit then we will be able to see what enormous change this has unleashed.
Q. We also see a distorted form of Hindi in use these days, popularly known as “Hinglish”? What are your opinions on that?
A. I think that a little bit of English getting into Hindi is a good thing because language is like a flowing river and it subsumes whatever comes its way and makes it its own. So the English words are subjected to Hindi grammar for example, in the case of the word “nervous” the letter “v” turns into “bh” and used as “nerbhous” which further is used as a verb in eastern states. In this way dialects and vernaculars have a beautiful way of accepting words. Somebody once said that new words are like daughters-in-law as they come into a family and becomes their own.
Q. Nowadays it has become imperative for writers to use social media to market their works. Your view?
A. I think social media is a vast platform and we would be foolish not to use it intelligently. When I was editing the daily, I always told my younger colleagues that in the times that are coming you must be technologically savvy and don’t think everything would be available to you in Hindi. Just learn to operate the medium as quickly as you can and you will be at ease.
Q. Could you give us an insight into how your mother, herself a prominent writer, served as your mentor?
A. She gave me an enormous respect for the potential of Indian languages. Not just Hindi but also Bangla and Gujarati. She knew both these languages. It was because of her that I learnt music. She used to read to us a lot, suggest to us the books we must read. At dining table we used to discuss literature as most people discuss family matters. I think she left an enormous cultural legacy, a polyphonic cultural legacy. I was always at war with her. I was always having exchanges with her. But somewhere I was quite close to her because among her four children, I was the only one who wrote in Hindi and insisted on going to a Hindi medium school. I also used to edit her stories because she was always short on time. I used to carry on her correspondents with editors and so on. I think she, in a way, introduced me to the whole field of creativity, writing, Indian languages and instilled in me an enormous self-confidence for being an operator in Hindi. She made me so proud of myself to be speaking, reading and writing in my mother tongue.