War of words

There was a recent report in the newspapers on ‘parallel talk' by youngsters. Apparently, parallel talk is the term used to refer to asides between two or more of a group in a different language so that the rest don't understand. The remarks aren't always kind, but then, for them, that's part of the fun. Imagine how great it must be to say "The dummy doesn't understand!" and have the dummy right under your nose, with no clue whatsoever to what is going on.

Is that a familiar feeling? For more years than I like to admit I've been on the outside looking in. It began in the usual way when our parents spelt out words they didn't want us to understand. When we caught on by hastening our study of the alphabet — just so we could be privy to those wonderful secrets of adults and older siblings — they switched to ‘P' language. The ‘wha-pots' and ‘wha-pens' flying across the table or the carrom board or the playing field and a thought process much too slow to figure it out — then and now — successfully kept me out of adult conversations when I was young and out of younger conversations now that I'm an adult.

Through the teens and twenties I somehow stayed with a small group that spoke the same language of youth and independence — though wherever I lived in our multilingual country I needed an interpreter for the local dialect to prevent ‘parallel talk' from flying over my head.

Marriage brought an entirely new world of parallel talk. I was thrown into a group that insisted on making aside after aside in their mother tongue, sometimes aimed at each other, sometimes at me, sometimes in jest, sometimes with a tinge of venom. Soon the nuances of an odd phrase were learnt and I felt better equipped to handle them. But somewhere in that process, while concentrating on what was going on among the ladies of our social group, I forgot to notice what was happening at home. The attentive newlywed husband had slid into the comfort zone of ignoring me and I found myself joining the ranks of those housewives who talk but are never heard (numbers unknown).

Not hampered by dialect difference, talking in the only language we know, communicating, describing, detailing, and what do I find? Not parallel talk, but a parallel universe inhabited by a species with selective hearing — one that hears the IPL scores while taking a last look at the newspapers, but hasn't heard the call to grace the dinner table and certainly hasn't heard a word of my monologue. Instead of launching a tirade (which, because of its sheer volume and lung power, may not go unheard and could introduce the possibility of cross connections), it's easier to have a parallel system of my own: I have all the best conversations with myself.

Imagine the thrill of letting off steam under your breath or even in a normal tone, murmuring and muttering to your heart's content or launching into a verbal duel in olde worlde English, "Get thee gone, thou varlet!" If you're really lucky, you can even sing off-key, change the words of all the songs you know and lament the lack of attention. You can stand on a sofa and declaim the disdain with which you're treated — and the man of the house still won't look up! You could try the modern "*&@*%%$$##*@*#*@*" if you could remember what it all stood for, safe in the knowledge that you don't understand and he doesn't hear.

No wonder youngsters enjoy parallel talk — in every version of it, there's tremendous potential for freedom of expression!

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.