Bihar Girls learn English taking inspiration from Sridevi in English Vinglish

Girls in Bihar seem to be getting inspired  a lot from Sri Devi’s comeback Film English Vinglish. The movie has become a big motivation for few backward girls who are now trying to learn the art of speaking English.

In the Bollywood movie English Vinglish, Sridevi plays an ordinary housewife in who manages to speak fluent English after a month-long crash course at a coaching centre in New York. The film revolves around housewife Shashi Godbole , who enrolls in an English language course in order to please her husband and family.  The film marks her comeback to Bollywood after 14 years and to Tamil cinema after 26 years.

Inspired by her, Mahadalit Girls have  enrolled for a similar project, Bihar Mahadalit Vikas Mission, launched by the Nitish Kumar government

We can identify ourselves with Sridevi’s character, Shashi in English Vinglish,” said Madhuri Kumari, a student of Dayanand Kanya Vidyalaya, Mithapur in Patna, after seeing the film. “She has inspired and given us confidence.”

Madhuri, one of the 40 students who saw the film a week after its release, said all her classmates had empathised with Sridevi’s role since they also faced problems in learning English because of their background. “All of us are from Hindi background and we have had no exposure to English until we joined the programme launched by the mission,” she added.

Birbal Jha, director of British Lingua, a Delhi-based institute of spoken English which has tied up with the Bihar government for the project, said the film had motivated the students to a great extent. I am going to organise the screening of this film for all the Mahadalit students enrolled in the seven districts,” he said.