The Alchemy of the Phirang Desire

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This is quite hilarious, but frankly every single person has a 'little Britain' hidden inside us. Somehow when people venture outside the (ill demarcated) boundaries of this country to literally land in the West, their accents change! All of a sudden. The 'r' gets rolled and rolled and rolled to the point where its no longer the Indian 'aar' but the phirang 'Rrr'. The 'l' gets a certain thing done to it which is too complicated for me to put in words. Its almost as if its shameful and humiliating to have an Indian accent.

This has happened time and again to people and two of the brightest examples I can cite right now are Aishwarya Rai and her hubby. When Ash 'hit' the west, she almost immediately lost her accent. Maybe she got a voice coach or something. Or accent coach actually. I think these are the ones who get paid big bucks in the BPOs for raining newbies, right? Anyway, so I guess when these accent coaches get tired of their job they become coaches for celebs! And of course the pay scale is better. Greener pastures you see.

Anyway, back to the point. If you havent already, take a look at Ash on David Letterman video. Its on youtube and its already gotten quite a few thousand hits from some sane and many perverts. Ash almost behaves like a true phirang woman! At least accent wise.

The other day I saw Rajeev Masand of CNN IBN doing the same thing while interviewing James Cameron. He almost seemed like the perfect NRI! Cant we just be proud of the way we are? Is it all that necessary to American-ize our accent?