Vernacular English: Exploring the Banal in Postcolonial Writings

A world language is not simply any language with a large number of speakers; it is not just about the number of speakers, there is also a sense of the language's spatial expanse linked with the phrase. Although Mandarin has the most speakers, it is not a global language since its speakers are concentrated in a single region. English is regarded as a world language since it is widely spoken around the world and is not limited to people in a single location. It must be acknowledged that without the contributions of writers from the British Empire's territories, English would not have achieved its current status as a world language and suffered the same fate as Mandarin. The regional writing in English outside the Anglo-American world is what distinguishes it as a world language. English is the official language of many decolonized states, the language of power and modernity, and its origins may be traced back to British geopolitical supremacy, yet English has been employed to depict the mundane and regional in many postcolonial texts. There are transgressions in grammar, spelling, and form, but English has the ability to put itself to many uses and morph itself to fit into what the writer is attempting to express, which is what makes it truly global.

The stories in Manjul Bajaj's Another Man's Wife alternate between the dramatic and the everyday, merging them together: from the mango orchards of Murshidabad to the concealed criminal background of a domestic servant. The stories take place in a variety of settings, backgrounds, and situations. The problems are highly local, and Bajaj is able to bring the rural and indigenous cultures to life in English. It should be emphasised that the majority of the stories take place in rural or small-town settings, and when something so provincial is depicted so well in English, English ceases to be a foreign language and takes the role of a vernacular. Through these stories, Bajaj has also explored the depths of Indian women's minds, which is a highly private region equivalent to the inner domestic quarters or the andarmahal, and has done an excellent job depicting how something so complicated and provincial can also be expressed in English. Stories like "Ripe Mangoes" have given English a local life, from describing the different types of mangoes grown in the orchard to a detailed description of the Kathak dance form: "It begins slowly, with the slightest of footwork — ta-dig-dig-ta — and picks up pace, the dancer's legs straight, her feet taking the floor to the quickening tempo of the tabla player's percussion." The dance also suggests the rebellious undertone of individualism confined by conventional constraints. "The Birthmark" covers the enormous agricultural fields of Punjab and provides insights into rural Punjabi midwifery. "Marrying Nusrat" brings the traditional needlework of Uttar Pradesh's villages, Chikankari, to life by depicting the complete small-scale enterprise and the everyday lives of women who depend on it for sustenance.

All of Sonal Kohli's stories in The House Next to the Factory have a sweet, melancholy tone to them. They are not about action or soaring romance, but rather about the banal and tragic events of everyday life. In "One Hour, Three Times a Week," Kohli easily captures local minutiae ranging from watering the tulsi plant to factory employees on the dusty road. "Other Side of Town" shows us the Indian suburbs, complete with buffaloes in small streets and rickshawalas napping in the afternoon. Saikat Majumdar notes in his Ph.D. thesis that one of modernism's lasting legacies is the motifs of monotony and tedium in both British and Anglophone literatures in colonial and postcolonial contexts (Majumdar ii). Sonal Kohli's stories examine such banality; the individuals in the stories appear familiar, and Kohli guides the reader through the subtleties of their lives by way of dialogue and the description of their surroundings.

The local culture is inextricably related to the cuisine. Chitrita Banerji, a culinary historian, uses her narrative "Patoler Maa" to conjure the sounds of the shil and nora — the grinding stones used in traditional Indian kitchens. In her writing, she depicts the Bengali kitchen, the use of native spices in cooking, and minute sensory elements such as their sound and smell, yet English does not feel strange even in this localised and personal depiction. The narrative also hints at the normative position of women in a Bengali kitchen and how that is linked to class because the domestic help cannot purchase the spices she grinds; therefore her interaction with them is confined to grinding them for others. Banerji supports the truth of Bengali society by depicting the backbreaking labour of domestic assistance in Bengali houses.

Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions is somewhat different from the other works discussed in this essay. Despite English acquiring a superior status in India, it did not result in the complete erasure of Hindi and the major regional languages, but in Rhodesia, we have seen the gradual erasure of the Shona language and traditions. English becomes the default, and by infiltrating the inner life of the colonised subject through the outer markers of culture, English is able to penetrate the interior life of the colonised subject. Tambu, growing up in a transitional society, demonstrates that the intermingling of tradition and modernisation will always have a symbiotic relationship in society by writing retrospectively about her past, and moreover writing about herself, her people, and their traditions in the language of international exchange, English (Eslamieh 3). Dangarembga provides us a glimpse into the life of Rhodesians by offering a thorough description of Tambu's home, including the dung-covered kitchen floor, the goat corral, and the stigma associated with menstruation. She also depicts the truth of Shona society's taboos by stating how Babamukuru considered his daughter's attendance at school dances to be sinful. Nervous Conditions illustrates how the dynamic themes of race and gender in Rhodesia can find a voice in English.

The works examined demonstrate how English may serve as a literary vernacular to reflect the daily lives of regionally decolonized people, and how the contribution of postcolonial writers is critical to maintaining English's standing as a world language.