People sometimes ask why I do not simply choose one language and stay there. It would be tidier. But each of my three languages does a job the others cannot do. Switching between them is not indecision. It is using the right tool.
Hindi is for feeling
Hindi is the language the world first arrived in — the language of home, of scolding and comfort, of the first stories and the first arguments at the dinner table. When something has to land in the chest rather than the head, it comes out in Hindi.
It is also the language of my audience. An idea spoken in the listener's first language skips a layer of translation and reaches them directly. That is why the videos are in Hindi even when the books behind them are in English.
Urdu is for the ache
Urdu carries a vocabulary built for longing that Hindi borrows but rarely owns: hijr for separation, dard, khwahish, rusvaai. The ghazal and the sher grew up in it, and they shaped how the whole subcontinent learned to say that something hurts beautifully.
My shayari is written in Devanagari, but many of its words are Urdu. That is not a contradiction. Hindi and Urdu share a spoken ancestor, Hindustani, and the line between them was always drawn more by scripts and politics than by the people speaking them.
A writer's loyalty is not to a language. It is to the thought — and whichever words carry it home.
— Vinu Jaglan
English is for argument
English is the language in which I learned most of my philosophy and psychology — its technical terms, its long chains of reasoning, its habit of laying out a claim, a reason and an objection in order. When an essay has to hold an argument steady for three thousand words, English keeps the structure clear.
It is also the language that lets an idea travel beyond the people who share my first language.
Switching is not confusion
Linguists call moving between languages code-switching, and it is one of the most natural things bilingual people do. It is not a failure to master one language; it is a skill in several.
Anyone who has said something tender in one language and something official in another already knows this. The choice of language is part of the meaning.
What three languages teach
Writing in three languages is a daily lesson in humility. Some thoughts simply do not survive translation, and you learn which ones. You learn that every language is a way of seeing, and that no single way sees everything.
Mostly it teaches that a writer's job is not loyalty to a language. It is loyalty to the thought — and choosing whichever words carry it home.
Translation as an act of respect
Translating an idea from English philosophy into Hindi is not simplifying it. It is carrying it across a border so that people on the other side can use it. Good translation keeps the precision of the original while finding words that already live in the listener's life.
Sometimes that means borrowing from Urdu, sometimes from everyday Haryana speech, sometimes keeping an English term and explaining it. The goal is never purity. The goal is understanding.
Why multilingual thinking matters
People who move between languages learn early that every word is a choice. That habit is useful far beyond poetry: it makes you notice how framing changes meaning in politics, advertising and everyday arguments.
In a country with hundreds of languages, that sensitivity is not a luxury. It is a basic tool for living together without misunderstanding each other.
Key takeaways
- Hindi reaches the chest; Urdu names longing; English holds an argument steady.
- Hindi and Urdu share Hindustani roots; scripts divided them more than speakers did.
- Switching languages is a skill — the choice of language is part of the meaning.
Further reading
- Ghalib — Diwan-e-Ghalib
- Amrit Rai — A House Divided
- Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o — Decolonising the Mind
