Adventures in Hindi Part 4: In the end is the beginning, or, more observations, a summing up and a way forward.
December 30, 2011 5 Comments
The temptation to seek elusive patterns by examining random snippets is rather high, but I have this self-imposed criterion that I cannot “play around” under the garb of “investigation” for more than a week–I must do something tangible before I get the next “quota” to play. It may sometimes be a blog post, sometimes page on my website, or a video. For someone who has been working from home as one’s own boss (and office boy) for years, such a rule is necessary for sanity…
So, having made three meandering posts, I am determined today to wrap up my ideas and learning in this fourth and last post of the series.
(For those who don’t like the upside down reading that serial blogs entail, the earlier parts are as follows: Adventures in Hindi Part 1: A mother-tongue fading behind a veil, Adventures in Hindi Part 2: The failed experiment of Have-English-can-translate-to-Hindi, Adventures in Hindi Part 3: India Shining, Internet, and the entertainment override)
I embarked on this adventure prompted by the lack of Hindi material on dementia. It is now my impression that other than the most desperate, no one expects helpful material to be available online, and no one other than the desperate look for it. And even the desperate may not check on the Internet because they don’t know Hindi material can be found there, or are clueless about how to find it.
And this impression could really let me off the hook– no one is expecting it or looking for it, hey, there’s no problem! No demand, so no need to supply, that’s cool 🙂
But here is another way to think of it: If there were material in a format attractive to Hindi speakers/ readers, and if such material was visible to an audience grappling with problems related to dementia care in their family, such material would help. The audience I refer to is persons who speak Hindi and consider it a language they know and are comfortable with, and who are not as comfortable with English. Such an audience will also be unfamiliar with concepts discussed in English but not usually discussed in Hindi.
Which means, the wriggle-out space to avoid work on Hindi reduces.
(And as before, what I write of Hindi would probably apply to Kannada or Gujarati or Tamil or any other Indian language)
There is some Hindi material related to dementia already present on the web. Many are news articles thanks, in part, to Suresh Kalmadi, single-page news items or some comments/ blogs on them (sarcastic ones). The news items that I’ve chanced upon do not explain dementia (other than calling it a memory problem), nor do they explain the relationship between dementia and Alzheimer’s. Some experts are quoted, often using out-of-context snippets and distorted statements. Dementia symptoms are not identified, and there’s contradictory stuff on whether dementia can be prevented or not, treated or not, cured or not.