The fake Bengali

During the walk-past, one man asked me in Bengali if I can speak Bengali. So Projjwal thanked him and he went away.

If he had been a real Bengali, he would know that I am Bengali from the way I pronounce English. Also, I was singing in Bengali during the concert.

At the Ashram we had some Gujarati boys and girls who spoke Bengali with perfect intonation and pronunciation. They spoke so fast that they could easily fool Bengalis.

But we Bengalis had such pride. We never learned Gujarati correctly. We knew quite a few words, so we would use Gujarati nouns and then complete the sentence with Hindi verbs. Our Gujarati friends could speak Bengali, but we thought it was beneath our dignity to learn Gujarati!

— 23 March 1985

From:Sri Chinmoy,The world-experience-tree-climber, part 4, Agni Press, 1994
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/we_4