In the beginning was the Word...

I’m at my parents’ home in Mangalore currently and am bored out of my head… I like to rummage in mum’s cupboards and bureaus. They are a treasure trove of memories. Came across The Holy Bible, presented to my mum in 1967, inscribed thus ‘Translated out of the original tongues and with the former translations diligently compared and revised. Set forth in 1611 and commonly known as the King James Version’
As a child, my first Bible was the King James version but as we grew, we were introduced to the Gideon’s Bible which is very popular now and is most widely and commonly printed. I read the Gideon’s Bible before I sleep everyday now, but I have a vague sense of “I’m missing something”. Actually not so vague… I know exactly what it is… it’s the language of the King James Bible that I miss, the comfort in the cadences of the words, the perfectly symmetrical sentences and the grandeur of verse, the usage of words that are now passé and archaic. It’s poetry pure and simple. I absolutely love the language used in the King James version. At family prayers, my brother and self were made to read the Bible every alternate day and I believe that my romance with the English language began here.
Why do we have to stop using words like ‘thee, whither, wert, thine, wouldst, thou, thy’. We Indians learn many languages and dialects often called as our ‘mother tongue’ and no matter how well we know the Queen’s lingo, we are still foreign speakers of the English language. Many of us transliterate directly from our native speech into English and the Indian English is a potpourri of sentences like, ‘You where went today’ or ‘For me sleep is coming very fast’. These are direct translations of sentences that make perfect sense and are of the right grammatical syntax in our native languages.
There is only one thing I miss when I translate from Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Tulu or any other Indian language that I speak, it’s the respect we give our elders when we address them. You are you, whether you are my father or my son, but in each and every Indian language we have different terms depending on the hierarchical relationship.
The King James Bible gives me that. It feels good to say, ‘How Great Thou Art’ or ‘Have Thine own way Lord, Thou art the potter, I am the clay…’ a sense of satisfaction. Besides it appealing to my thirst for poetry…
‘In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul’ Psalm 94, verse 19.