English India

This film takes a trip into the words, phrases, sounds, scraps, images, moments, struggles, jokes, histories that are woven into a visual fantasia of a nation, which speaks in many tongues but dreams in one.  ‘English’ has an intimate connection with the history of the Indian sub-continent. Imposed by colonizers, adopted by the Indian elite; English is the language of power.  Seventy three years after independence from the British, English is now transformed, colored and shaped into a new language with a dash of the local flavor of every Indian state where it is spoken.  Livelihood, hope, respectability, dream, education, fear, ambition, mobility, love, lust, power, status, aspiration; English is a colourful thread that binds the multilingual dreams of this multilingual nation. Yet, English remains an uneasy reality, for some not the language they own or share their thoughts in.  The film is a role-play into being a guide and a tourist into towns, cities, bazaars, schools, mornings, monuments, memories and by-lanes in search of the thread that ties this vast nation together. A journey bound by the language of necessity but never of intimacy, English.