Although I understand Tamil (my dad's mother-tongue, he is originally from Chennai, south India) I am horrible at speaking it and I don't read/write it. I'm better in Hindi because I've studied it longer, speak it to my mom and aunt, and there are more resources in general to learn - plus all the Bollywood movies! And it's easy to learn - reading, writing, and grammar are not as complex. Tamil I believe is much more inflected and complex, linguistically speaking.
I am guessing that, were I to study Gujarati, it would not be as hard... Do you believe the same could be said of other languages deriving from Sanskrit - Marathi, Punjabi, Nepali, and hm..I think I may be missing one - I used to think that Bengali was very similar but that was before I heard my Bengali friend talking and it's very different! Anyway - do you believe there's a great deal of overlap with the grammar and/or vocabulary between Hindi and any one of these languages that might make one of these easier to learn, than say a Dravidian language? Thank you all for your opinions and feedback on this!