In recent years, the sociolinguistic theory of code-switching and code-mixing has been a source of great interest among scholars worldwide. The phenomenon is common in such multilingual societies as India. Most known cases of code-switching are, however, restricted to the spoken form, in which English is liberally interspersed with such regional languages as Hindi, Marathi, and Telugu. What has not yet significantly caught the attention of scholars is the notion of such switching and mixing in print. This practice is however particularly prevalent among writers in popular magazines, who resort to written code-switching for a variety of reasons. The present paper endeavours to examine the causes of the popularity of this style of writing in the light of some accepted theories of multilingualism.

‘C-a-t, cat. Cat mane billi; r-a-t, rat mane chooha’ went a song from a Hindi film of the fifties (mane = ‘means’, billi = ‘cat’, chooha = ‘rat’). The song, enormously popular with Indian youth of that generation, was scoffed at by the then contemporary purists who found it hard to accept such ‘blatant’ dilution of the Hindi language. This song, like a few more of its times, was merely an exception to the largely acceptable language of songs, then largely a mix of Hindi, Urdu and Persian. English was, thus, used in songs either when it depicted (literally, since songs are acted out as autonomous scenes in Bollywood) a comic actor in a light-hearted situation or a semi-literate character desperate to accommodate to the urban ways of life. A celebrated song from Gopi, a Hindi film of the early seventies, goes a step forward with its novel coinage. The hero is a rustic who tries to impress his fellow villagers by dressing up in city (read English) style and sings:Gentleman gentleman, gentleman/London se aaya mein ban-than ke……Yeh dekh mera suita/Yeh dekh mera boota/Yeh dekh mera comba

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