11 DICTION
Once, we presented Maharaj a home
recording of our stotras in a CD asking for any corrections that were required.
Promptly the next day he commented: “How come you do not have Bengali accent? You have perfect Sanskrit
diction. You are a Bengali.“ (Its a known fact that bengalis have a very strong accent and they love the alphabet O more than A.. e.g., Bengalis pronounce "rasogolla" instead of "rasagolla" or "anondo" instead of "ananda" :-) )
We were very surprised as I did not realize
until then that there was a significant difference in the way Sanskrit in
pronounced by the Bengalis. I grew up in Delhi with Hindi as my second
language.
Since then, I consciously tried to sing the Sanskrit hymns in my learnt "hindi" intonation rather than my mother tongue"bangali" intonation. This helped in bonding immensely in our multi-cultural, multi-linguistic, multi-ethnic Vedanta groups.
Nandini Mitra Banerjee
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