Not being fluent in it relegates you to the backroom, a second-class citizen, unworthy of display.ĭibakar Banerjee’s films – Oye Lucky most of all, but also Pitobash Tripathy’s character in Shanghai – have given us what are perhaps Hindi cinema’s most nuanced commentaries on English as a marker of social class. Being fluent in English, in the sadly skewed universe of contemporary India, automatically codes you as modern, fashionable, worthy of respect. Because English-Vinglish, despite its name, is not just about English.
