Hindi in the cities is interesting, it can turn into a 50-50 blend of English and Hindi, with English used for most nouns, and sentences strung together with Hi

Hindi in the cities is interesting, it can turn into a 50-50 blend of English and Hindi, with English used for most nouns, and sentences strung together with Hindi otherwise. Having said that, actual conversational skills in English were lacking even in Delhi. You can throw out words and hope there's enough of a shared vocabulary to get ideas across, but the majority of people aren't fluent, or even conversational in it. I've heard the Southern part is somewhat better though, as Hindi is less pervasive, and English is used more often as a second language if you travel out of state and the likes.