I did in the course of my conversation on the twitter put it out as part of my daily activity, but the media took it as news worthy - which they generally do even when you sneeze - and that has caused some concern among well wishers and friends who have been calling up frantically …

It shall take some time to heal .. I am moving about and shall be at work tomorrow .. relax !!

We are all living in an ‘instant’ world .. instant news, on instant matters, instant reactions from those concerned, if you are lucky a discussion on prime time, a poll on the mobile to gauge the mood of the public and to make for the funding of the programme from the mobile carrier and then … on to the next disaster or story or discussion, ‘instantly’ …

The first lost and forgotten ..

Nothing wrong with this .. its how the cookie crumbles these days ..

I was at the function of the Jnanpith Award as you know in Delhi to decorate the Urdu poet Shahryar. Some of the followers on the twitter wanted me to post a few of his works and words. So I did them and felt good that I was able to do so. On presenting them in Hindi, I got some reactions from some of my Pakistan followers that since they do not read Hindi if it could be put out in Urdu, a language they speak and is their national tongue. So I did that as well. Which to me looked pretty exciting, because I do not know Urdu but thanks to the Google Transliterate, it all became possible and I could live momentarily in the glory of that effort. The problem is that not knowing the language could mean a wrong translation by the machine, which we would never know. So whether this could be a constant matter in the future is extremely doubtful.

The mere time consumption is the deterrent. You open twitter. You go to Google Transliterate. You write in Roman English for Hindi. Each word at the press of the ’space bar’ brings up the word translated in Devnagri the text for Hindi script. At times because the machine reads words as they are written it translates it directly. If there is a mistake it gives options by pressing the delete button. The correct word chosen you move on to the next word. And so the entire process of writing a sentence gets completed. Now since the digits allowed on Twitter is 140, it is difficult to count them when writing another language or script, since the count changes. Having done this to approximation you select all, copy and move back to Twitter, get to your designated space on the blank box, highlight it and paste the translation and press tweet for it to get posted. Finally !! This takes a while. After and as you gloat in the execution of the process, you skim down the responses to discover that a fan from Pakistan cannot read Hindi and would I please put it out in Urdu … !!!

So back you go through the whole process - roman english, to urdu to paste and when it appears you get them saying that some of the urdu spellings are wrong .. so would you please write it in roman english on the twitter page. So dutifully you do that and sit back to breathe on your ailing chest rib cage, when you discover a fan which informs you that they know neither Hindi or English and can you put out the explanation of the poem … !! And as you contemplate doing so, you discover that there are queries from fans saying : ‘how about putting it out in Telugu and Spanish … and …. ‘

No … ladies and gentlemen I am afraid I am not that well conversed in every language of the world .. so I do hope you shall appreciate the effort made and allow me to go and have my dinner … for, there have been a million reminders that its getting cold .. !!!

Love you all … and do interpret that in all the possible mother tongues of the world …

Amitabh Bachchan