Brigadier Bhambhani
Date : 7 June, 2002
Dear Sindhishaan Team,
Thanks for sending latest mail.
More thanks for publishing the letter to Ranjit, from Kirit Babani. I glanced through it at first by diagonal reading, but it was so interesting and invigorating that I went through it again, completely. And finally after a third reading, I am keying in this message.
Now let me make a confession. Me and my wife used to make a conscious effort of not speaking in Sindhi in front of our young children. With the result they grew up having Sindhi surname but they did not know or understand a word of their parents’ language. Whose fault? Mine !
What happened next ? My younger son who was working with HSBC in year of the Lord 1993, came up to me one day and asked me as to why I did not make him learn Sindhi. I said why do you ask this question now? The answer was that there are a number of Sindhi NRI clients of his, in the bank, who seeing his Sindhi surname, gyrate towards him, but when they ask questions in Sindhi, his answers are ‘AHA’ and ‘HUNHUN’ and then nodding of his head. From then on we have started speaking in Sindhi in our home and even with our grand children (whose mother is non-Sindhi) we speak in Sindhi so that they do not turn around and put their parents to shame, as my child did to me.
I am an Army Officer and in service we hardly came across Sindhi crowd to be able to interact with them in our mother tongue. With the result, our vocabulary kept on dwindling and we used to speak in monosyllables. But now that we have settled down in Pune, and with God’s grace we have sufficient Sindhi population, even of retired Service Officers, we all make it a point that whenever we meet, we speak in Sindhi and Sindhi alone. Some of us used to make horrible pronunciation mistakes, but over a span of 8 to 10 years we have come a long way and shall continue moving ahead.
At this stage, I wish I could write this piece in Sindhi, but so far I do not have suitable software to key in my letter in my sweet mother tongue Sindhi. Ranjit, can you help me?
And Ranjit and Sindhishaan Team keep the flag flying high.
Regards for you all.
Brigadier Bhambhani
Pune