Indian English

“I want curtain material”.

That was the monsoon (since kerala doesn’t go strictly by the spring summer, autumn pattern) of the year 1976. I had just joined the most reputed women’s college in Changanasserry and wanted curtain for my room in the staff hostel.

The sales man looked blankly at me for a moment, and then said “We don’t have it here”.

“What”, i exclaimed. You don’t have curtain material here?”

“No’, he said mulishly. “We don’t have it here”

I was not prepared to buy that. I stood there looking around to see if i could locate for myself what i was looking for. This guy must be a discontented employee like that bus conductor in ALL ABOUT A DOG.

Sensing a deadlock, a more senior salesman came up and asked me what i wanted. I repeated. “I want material for curtain”.

“Can you explain what that is?”

“What curtain is?” stupefied, i asked. “Don’t people here use curtains?”

“You explain what it is. Then I’ll tell you”, the senior salesman assured me.

I stared at him incredulously. By then a few more salesmen had joined us, to join the fun. Many seemed amused and enthused. There was some excitement in the air about the outcome of the demand of this strange woman who walked into the shop with sunglasses which she pushed to her head (where it still remained) after she entered the shop, and wore choli blouse instead of the back open, open necked blouses that were popular in Changanasserry, and had painted nails and coloured bangles that went well with the sari.

“You know window?’ i said little desperate drwing a large square in the air. I was a bit embarrassed by the amusement i was affording them. “That strip of material that you put through a spring and stretch across the window- - - - - ‘. I was acting out the act of pulling a new spring across the window fter having hooked it at one end. There was a lot of grinning an exchanginsg of glances between the sales boys gathered around me.

But I didn’t have to complete. In a chorus, all of them said in unison said, “Oh! Kurrrrrrrrrrrtan. She means kurrrrrrrtain”. And they all laughed and dispersed.

I didn’t know then that the English that exists outside the phonetic class is a totally different ball game. The mid central neutral vowel in English that we have in such words as curtain, mercy has always posed problems for malayalees. But then i realised all that only after i stepped out of college into the malayalee world. During my stint in Mumbai much later, i came to know that the Marathi tongue had trouble getting around the vowel sound in words like hen, bread.

“Do you have pain?” C asked me as we were standing at the office counter to sign in the muster.

“No” I answered perplexed. “I have no pain’, I answered smiling, as i took out my pen from my bag.

C looked angrily at the pen and said,“ You said you don’t have PAIN and what is that”, she said pointing to the pen.

How can i tell her that i didn’t follow her pronunciation, especially since she and her friends entertained themselves the previous day in my presence over the mallu accent which at that time was the subject for a Hindi serial too. She’d think I’m giving it back to her.

So i said nothing. It did cause bad blood between us. It was a catch 22 situation. I remained silent and the story of how kochu refused a “pain” did a huge circulation among the teachers of the college. But better mean than ridiculing a person’s “English”. Like a Marxist friend once told me, we bloody Indians, we still suffer from colonial hangover. We equate education, sophistication and efficiency with proficiency in English. I think he was not fully wrong. I remember, a decade back a Malayalam professor took over as the Principal of the college where i worked. All were sceptical about her, cos she was ‘after all a malayalam lecturer’. But, she proved to be the best principal the college ever had. With an unparalleled vision she took the college leaps and bound ahead to put it among the colleges in the league of the handful of A rated colleges(rated by UGC’s accreditation committee) in the state.

One can have visions in Malayalam too!

What’s the purpose of this post? It’s to emphasise the need for an official Indian English, which should factor in the existing deviation among the Indian users of English from the RP and Standard English. The Standard English and RP are irrelevant in India. Like V K Krishna Menon once said. We in India did not pick up English from the streets of England but from classics. The present day user of English may not enjoy an intimate relation withclassics. The point VKK was making was that a non native speaker picks up English from the written word and not the spoken. So the ears are not tuned to the way language is spoken. Besides, the influence of mother tongue plays a major role on the non native speaker of English. Like for example the vowel sound in words mercy, map. Catch them young, and every speaker can overcome that difficulty. The problem is not with the pronunciation alone. Idiomatic English too sometimes doesn’t come too easily to an Indian speaker who is fluent in English.

As the utility of the English language is increasing by the minute, we should keep politics aside and acquire competence in the language. We don’t have to look westward for a model. Here in India we have one. Some call it convent English, others, metro English. Whatever the name, it refers to that English which is intelligible to both by Indians and the English speaking world. The reasons are 1. It does not follow the British stress pattern. It distributes word stress equally as should not be done in queen’s English (hence easy for the Indian listener). 2. It has devernacularised vowel and consonant sounds without going all the way British. Hence, on account of the second fact, it is easily intelligible to the speakers of English the world over.

This English – this Standard Indian English, should be taught uniformly in all schools in India – compulsorily. The phonetic drills need not be modelled on RP, but after the neutral accented Indian English.

With India growing into a super power, the Indian variety will gain recognition the world over. After all, the dominance of a language is determined by economics. The Anglo-Saxon English became the base of Standard English cos it was the dialect spoken in the East Midland region, the commercial hub of Great Britain from the fifteenth century.

To conlude, i must share with you an interesting experience i had when i found myself in a social gathering of academics and their families in Texas.

“You speak, British English. Because India was a British colony?” asked a professor’s wife.

I nearly fainted. I’ve been used to people telling me i speak mallu English, every time I step out of kerala, and here was an American saying that i speak queen’s English. Could she be pulling my leg, i wondered and looked suspiciously at her.

Seeing the perplexity on my face, my daughter told me “amma, you don’t have the American drawl. That’s what she means. Also, you used certain English idioms not very common here’.

“Like?”, i asked.

‘Yesterday, you used the expression ‘donkey’s years’ and my American friend remarked rather admiringly on the typical British nature of your language?. !!!!!?????

My my my! Uncle Sam too is jet lagged after all these centuries! He too hasn’t fully recovered from colonial hangover!

Obama's Indian Visit - The English Channels - and India's Children of Tomorrow

With the arrival of Obama in India, the English national channels blocked out everything else. It appeared as though the whole country ground to a halt with the arrival of the American President.

Then Obama made his first speech at the Taj – and BJP reacted. Obama didn’t utter the P word (Pakistan). When he spoke of 26/11, he didn’t put the blame at Pakistan’s door. Then the party felt it had overreacted – and retracted. Rudi began to make ahem – ahem sounds and said that he didn’t mean this but he meant that! Maybe the party leadership must have told him that to resist the euphoria might be a mistake. BJP might come to power in the next parliamentary election and Obama might still be around in the White House – so let’s keep him happy sort of a thing. Anyway, what is interesting is that BJP recanted.

But the Channels approach was really really interesting.

NDTV’s Barkha Dutt was as usual trying to project an image of total neutrality, but was actually egging on the expert commentators to come out with tangy statements. But none really obliged. The P word issue had actually begun to look silly.

TIMES NOW took the cake. Arnab in his usual style went hammer and tong after Obama. He pointed out how Clinton during his visit ‘gifted’ India with a condemnatory remark on Pakistan, and Obama should have taken at least a ‘baby step’ in that direction.

Arnab, you are incorrigible!

CNN IBN’s Sagarika Ghose concluded her efforts to sensationalise the absence of the P word with a sensible remark that one should understand that Obama is tight rope walking in south East Asia, and so we should tone down our rhetoric.

HEADLINES TODAY was thoroughly immature. Was totally displeased about Obama’s deafening silence about Pakistan.

Among the participants, i could agree with that outspoken bureaucrat turned politician Mani Shankar Iyer. Why should we expect Obama to say anything about Pakistan, he asked. We know Pak is behind the attack, and it is a bilateral problem. Why drag America into it? He was dismissive in his language and body language about this avoidable storm in the tea cup,and made the BJP and the media look silly.

*

While the inane politicians and stale media made fools of themselves, Young India did us proud. No slavishness, no applause at the slightest compliment about India that dropped from the lips of the US President (unlike the CEOs the day before). The young crowd at St. Xavier’s carried themselves with utmost confidence, and dealt with the President of the United States on equal terms.

When Obama declared that India has risen, there was no thunderous applause. It was as though we don’t need anyone to tell us that. We know. The response of the young girl who stood behind Obama epitomises the attitude of young India. Obama’s acknowledgement that India has risen elicited from her an approving nod accompanied by a poised smile.

About Obama's dialogue with the students at St. Xavier's - guess when Michelle Obama asked the young men and women to field tough questions to her husband, she didn’t think they’d take her so seriously.

For it was young India that forced him to utter the P word.

What’s your take on jihad, was the first question?

Why don’t you declare Pakistan a terror state? asked another.

Of course, Obama handled the questions well and the youth were impressed.

The young India, a sample of which Obama met at St. Xavier’s, is ushering in an India set free from the colonial hangover.

The schriszophrenic India has been cured.

I get a gut feeling India is safe in the hands of this healthy generation.

Truth has set me free – the English language and me. In a rambling mode - -

I think every human being is an artist. Every child, unrestricted by the dos and don’ts and fatwas that shape our minds in straitjacket moulds, is an artist. Its unfettered mind sees the world through the prism of unconditioned imagination. As it grows up, there are two ways in which it can develop. It can cling tenaciously to the perspective innocent of life’s schooling, thereby develop double vision as its thinking gets regulated into stereotyped notions. Or it can discipline its life within the rules and regulations of society and wean itself out of the inherent artistic mode of thinking. The first is an artist, in the grip of divine madness. The second, the sane human being – that predictable creature that we all prefer to deal with.

Not my original, as you’d have guessed. “Remember Wordsworth’s “Trailing cloud of glory do we come?”

Well, I think I belonged to the first category despite the cast iron strait jacket mould that I was yanked into by the extreme conservatism of my Syrian Christian community. But I’d have struggled to set myself free from it into the world of creativity had I the word , the signifier.

I lost my word power when I got estranged from my mother tongue. With switching over, in the 5h standard, from Malayalam to French as my second language, my severance from literary Malayalam was complete. Then followed a long period of shallow existence in the world and culture of the English language. The fascinating space around me created by the English nursery rhymes, children’s books, comics, classics, bestsellers sucked me into the vortex of a world I had not lived except in my imagination, while physically inhabiting a Syrian Christian home in the small town of Cochin.

Feelings and emotions - intense and overpowering- struggled within me, seeking an outlet I could not provide –for I was caught between two worlds, one created by an alien language, the other, the flesh and blood world i physically and emotionally existed in but whose language i was alienated from. The latter, the real world I was rooted in, afforded exposure to a number of varieties of Malayalam – the refined language of my parents and relatives, the language of siblings and cousins with whom I had fun times during vacation, the vibrant language of the helpers at home, those potent carriers of oral tradition, pulsating with the confrontational experience of the rough life of the fifties and sixties. Yes, that was my language. That was the language in which I felt and thought; that was the language that coursed through my blood stream.

Tragically, when I reached that age when one gets into the grip of that urge to pen down one’s thoughts, words failed me. The English language did not have the resources to express my thoughts and feeling. I didn’t have sufficient mastery over it. After all, how much of it can one have over an alien language? In utter dismay I looked at the huge chasm between the innermost ME and English, the only language in which I could express myself in writing. My sensibilities could not find corresponding utterances in the alien tongue. I was not Tess or Grand Sophy, but Kochuthresiamma alias Molly, the last but one in a large Syrian catholic family, thrown into the rough sea which first the girl child, then the adolescent and finally the woman had to navigate with considerable difficulty in order not to lose her individuality and power of independent thinking.

Despite its extreme patriarchal culture and hypocrisy, the real world that I inhabited was a rich and beautiful one with a lot of love, gentleness, benevolence, benign human values, and customs & practices steeped in secular traditions evolved from 2000 years of give and take, learn and teach interaction with diverse religions. At the dining table, my father spoke about the story of the evolution of Kerala culture. Being a history person he discourses had the accuracy of history and the authenticity of lived experiences. My mother spoke about it all the time, hoping to perpetuate through me the tradition which she was handed down. The seamstress Cicily thathi and Rosa cheduthy in whose company i found myself very often, filled my mind with stories of local origin, folk lore and myths handed down orally. I had it all in my blood. But i couldn’t speak or sing.

I was a broken muse.

I partly blame the way i was taught the English language. AS a child, I was made to believe that it was the most sacrosanct thing on earth. This, unfortunately, happens in convents. This happens at home too. My people were proud about my comfort in the language. As far as they were concerned, my incompetence in the mother tongue was well mad up for. Sister Kevin who taught Wren and Martin grammar made it appear that any violation of rules warranted severe disciplinary action, something equivalent to a firing squad! The English Language became to me a potent deity, an inflexible tool that would not bend in the hands of a Malayalee Nazrani girl who wanted to tell her tale. So i never wrote.

Till

After research –when i was well into thirties. My area of research included the damaging impact of colonisation on the Indian mind. My perception of the English language underwent a sea change in a matter of three years. When i looked back ,i wanted to kick myself for having allowed ridiculous, intimidating notions to stifle my muse. It’s not as though i didn’t know all along that
· This angrezi language was nonexistent before 600 AD or
· It is the most illogical language on earth, the reasons for which i knew only too well
· That the language was considered barbaric by the refined cultures of Europe
· That the grammar and rules appeared only in 18th century, till which time it was a free for all
· And some of these rules were most laughable as they were modelled on Latin from which English did not descend causing them to stick out like sore thumb, and which therefore tended to get flouted by native users, the only faithful followers being the educated colonised!(Colonised in body, mind and soul, UGH!)
· That English achieved this status only in the colonial world.
· That it is a utility language which the world respected grudgingly ‘cos there was a time that the sun never set on the British Empire.

These and many more factors could have exposed to me the clay feet of this language which was given more than its due in the subcontinent. The History of English language which i was superficially familiar with from my early twenties should have broken the oppressive hold this language had on me much earlier. But for some reason it didn’t. It took me three years of intense reading during my research to break free from the inhibiting chains with which the English language kept me a prisoner.

So, now my attitude is
· What the heck. Whatever you want to say, say it. If your grip over the language isn’t good enough, to hell with it. Say it in whatever way you can. Forget the impropriety of the usage. You loyalty is to yourself, your story, not to the language (though i must confess i won’t go as far as ‘nose poking nenjamma’).
· It is usage that determines the precepts, not the other way round.
· When the British colonised the world and then left behind their language, they lost all proprietorship over it. Each region cannot but inevitably manipulate it to suit its requirements. These are not mistakes but differences, which if officialised will acquire the respectable status of a ‘variety of English’.
· The Queens English born in east midland region on the banks of river Thames close to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, is a misfit in the little state of Kerala and becomes effete in the hands of the non native users in this distant geographical location with its very different climate, culture and whatnot, unless the user is able to relate to the language without the colonial slavishness.

These auto suggestions did help, but sadly, i was long past the age of creativity when the film fell from my eyes.

Mallu and the English Language

I got this forward today. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfzWhXYM8-k

We Malayalees will never grow up; never shake off that colonial hangover.

This video juxtaposes Sreemathi Teacher, the Honourable Minister for Health for Kerala addressing the press in English, with a clipping from the film Achuvinte Amma, in which Urvashi is shown trying to learn English by practicing speaking the alien tongue at home when she talks to her daughter. The ‘subject’ for the forward was “You’ll surely laugh”. Well, I did laugh – at the clipping from the film. But I did not find Sreemathi teacher’s English outrageously funny.

For goodness sake, where is written that one should speak convent English to become a minister? Good enough if a minister can communicate well in the regional language. Definitely, competence in English is a bonus point – but not an imperative. Lack of competence in English is not a reason to make an Indian feel inadequate or feel that he is a lesser being.

I thought the minister communicated pretty well. So what if there were hiccups, or slips in grammar, syntax etc? Have we Indians entered into some contract with the erstwhile colonizer to protect the sanctity and correctness of his language?

Nothing gives me more pleasure than mutilating and distorting the English language and getting away with it. That’s my way of getting back for four centuries of oppression.

Come on, let’s slaughter the English languag but make sure that we get away with it. One way to do this is to care two hoots for the language, and treat it merely like a utility object.

If India becomes a super economic power which calls the shots in world affairs, our English will gain the respectability that Australian and American variety have. It’s only money and power that make different voices heard in this unfair world.

In the meanwhile, I hope Hon Minister Sreemathi Teacher will continue to use English the way she knows, the way it suits her, showing scant respect to the rules made by some stuffy grammarians in England in the eighteenth century, and to the rules of pronunciation that cannot always be accommodated by the genius of the our mother tongue.

My post on Mallu English: http://pareltank.blogspot.com/2006/12/mallu-english.html

The Anatomy of Modern Anglophiles

(Rumaging through some old papers, I came across this piece I'd written a more than a decade ago. I remember it was a journey in the local train in Mumbai from Bandra to Churchgate in the company of a group of young convent educated ladies with magnficent mastery over the English language that inspired me to write this piece)
They come in all shapes and forms. But the classic specimen usually wears her hair short, hoping, perhaps, with the severing of locks can be effected a cut off from the traditions of the culture she was unfortunately born into. However, time and again, she discovers to her embarrassment and ( irritation too), that roots cannot be severed as easily as the mane, for shoots keep sprouting up from some stubborn, hidden roots much faster than her hair grows back.

She speaks English taking immense pains to keep the vernacular flavour from tainting her impeccable language. A votary of the concept of Standard English, she’ll brook no arguments about standard being out and differences being in. Should you dare merely hint at such an outrageous idea, she’d immediately plunge into a heated defence of the sacrosanct nature of the English language with such indignation that it’d silence you forever. And so there she goes waiting for an “S” to be trapped among vowels so that she can go ZZZZing over it while looking down with celestial contempt at her riff-raff compatriots who are too preoccupied with expressing themselves to worry about preserving the Anglo-Saxon quality of a language thrust upon them by a quirk of history. She struts around, poor girl, too pleased with herself and her flawless English to detect the merriment she arouses among those around her who are twisting the language, sometimes stretching it out of shape to accommodate their Indian sensibilities which they respect more than the alien tongue.

And the most distinguishing quality of a present day anglophile is her withering scorn for anything Indian.
”What? Indians write novels in English?” She goes into peals of laughter.
“Rushdie? Oh, he has been in England all along.
“Seth? Well, he was in Los Angeles.
Roy? Mmm, she’s been out of India at least.”
“Indian journalism in English? huh! A disgrace! Indians should stick to the vernacular,”
“Haven’t Indian English journalists brought down governments, caused many an eminent head to roll, exposed scams and kickbacks?”
“So what? Their language is not up to the mark”
Which mark, one does not dare to ask.
And Indian cinema? Poor thing. If not for her superhuman efforts, she’d have retched all over the place.
“Cinema is a western medium”, she manages to stammer out. “Indian film makers can never be comfortable with it”. With a final heroic attempt to contain nausea, she declares that Indian should give up the idea of making movies.
“Plenty of English movies in the market. Dub them”. Mustering courage from her swooning condition, you venture to say,”We are not conditioned enough to enjoy them all that much. We like a little bit of running around the trees with music in the background, a little bit of romance, a dash of mush”
Oh, the pitying contempt in her eyes for the poor Calibans!
And the plight of music in India? How it makes her flesh crawl! When Beethoven thunders, her eyes close and she gets transported instantly to wherever he is at the moment. When the Spice Girls screech, she thrashes around in sheer ecstasy. Let not a Lata Mangeshkar or an Udit Narayan interrupt. Her ecstatic sway would come to an abrupt full stop and her nose would go up, up, up----the sky is then limit. An expression of supreme indifference would mask her countenance.

Did I say she hates everything Indian? Allow me to withdraw that statement. 'cos she doesn’t, you see. She likes everything ethnic – even if it is dried cow dung used as tablemats. You see, Europeans like all these ethnic stuff. Like them, she too believes that India’s glory lay in the remote past. Nothing of the present is really worthwhile except these relics from the past.

Cocooned in western rhetoric, these creatures head westward when they develop wings. If the westward pilgrimage fails to materialize, they seek out those with feathers of the same hue, and flock together.

This is a vanishing species. Thank God for his little mercies

We, in India - - -

sometime back, i attended an international conference in bangalore. there were many many participants from abroad. a phrase i kept hearing as i moved through the crowd was " we in India " or ' in india, we---" or "we are this/that".

i evesdropped shamelessly

and overheard.

a person in mid forties with an exaggerated sandal paste streak on his forhead to a delegate from South Africa: we have idli sambar every day. you know that's the healthiest food. sambar is the indian soup. more nuritious and less harmful than the soup you have----(i refused to look at the face of the person at the receiving end of this harangue)

and there was this person from kerala: we were christians long before europe was christianised. st. thomas himself converted us. (one look at the incredulous expression on the face of the delegate from east europe and i ran for my life)

but the coordinator of the conference really took the cake. he was frantically running around, playing the model host with " here in India, our aging parents live with us" or "our classcal music is the most scientifc and advanced form of music", " the purest silk is woven in india". To a rather friendly britisher he thundered jovially 'your queen still has our Kohinoor!!!!!"

and just before the variety entertainment began, there he stood, beaming on the stage, wearing a scarlet silk bulky turban, green silk kurtha, off white silk churidar, saying ' yes, my friends. it's me. your very own Mr. G------------------. fooled you, eh? but this is our traditional dress(!!!!!!!!????)

the guy was from karnataka. i have never seen a kannadiga dress like that - except of course, chamaraja wadiar(in pictures) during the dussera celebrations. perhaps Mr. G belonged to the royal family---.

why do we indians do this? why d we showcase ourselves like this?

and why do we need foreingers' certificates to believe in the merit of our indigenous, traditonal way of life? why do we say with inflated chest and pride beaming from our eyes that:

bill clinton loves Indian chicken curry (the poor curry was blamed for his angeoplasty)

foreigners love kheer

tagore is a great poet. he was yeat's favourite poet (not true - yeates admitted later that he wrote that foreward in a moment of weakness)

kalidasa is greater than shakespeare

why this "it's all in the vedas" attitude?

this august, we will be celebrating 61 years of independence. it'll take more than another 60 years to cure us of this terrible inferiority complex.

Mallu English

I dislike the word mallu – especially when Malayalees concede to that diminutive nickname. But pardesi Malayalee youth tell me I am being oversensitive. So be it and mallu shall it be, at least in this piece, ‘cos it’s all about another term that I dislike even more – Mallu English.

Browse through mallu blogs and you’ll find end number of them on mallu English. We don’t find Tamilians or Kannadigas or Bongs ridiculing their own use of English. Why is the mallu different? Why is he so apologetic about his accent, intonation, vocabulary?

Here’s my take on this issue.

The first issue here is why mallu English has become such a national joke that it should figure in Hindi movies and serials, and also become a source of embarrassment to pardesi mallus? It is not as though people from the other states speak Queens English. All non- native speakers of English (or any language) carry over the linguistic habits from their mother tongue. Then why is mallu English alone targeted? The obvious reason is Kerala has greater literacy than other states and exports more personnel to other parts of India than other states. Only a negligible percentage of this number has received education in elite schools and colleges. The bulk comes from government schools and vernacular medium. Unlike other states where English medium public and convent schools have a large presence in the metros, Kerala has less than a handful of such institutions. It is to our credit that this underexposure to spoken English has not deterred the Malayalee from seeking his fortune outside the state. Their ubiquitous presence in areas usually dominated by the products of elite schools from other states, makes mallu English constantly heard. It’s the snobbery of the products of such institutions like Doon school and Hill Station schools that makes them ridicule the mallu English, but let us Malayalees not echo that stupidity.

The next issue is: Why are the mallus tongue-tied when it comes to speaking in English?

The answer is, he suffers from a terrible Anglophobia rooted in an attitudinal problem. Unfortunately, the mallu labours and groans under the misconception that being able to speak English like a ‘sayip’ is the ultimate achievement in life. This ridiculous notion is the undoing of the otherwise well accomplished mallu. While in Kerala some time back, I overheard several discussions on the Inzamam – Hare confrontation. There was not a single conversation on that topic where undue weightage was not given to Inzamam’s poor English, and believe it or not, there was this repeated comment that competence in English is an essential requirement to play international cricket!!!!! Well well well! I thought one played cricket with the bat and the ball and not with the tongue! On and off, you hear this wishful thinking that P.T. Usha spoke better English - almost as though, better English would have made it possible for her to run faster so as to enable her to make up that th of a second which cost her a medal in the Olympics! Surely one doesn’t run in English, Malayalam or, for that matter, in any language. Then again there is this equation (in Kerala)of smartness with ‘adipoli English’. A good-for-nothing wastrel is pardoned if his English is good.

As a teacher of English language in the state of Kerala, I have been unsettled by the attitudinal problem of students who come from Malayalam medium schools. They look up at the teacher in terror when she begins the lecture in English and nearly faint when the question session arrives requiring individuals to answer in English . Of course there are several reasons for the fall in the standard of English in Kerala but that’s not the issue here. My concern is the unholy reverence with which this foreign language is treated in the state. Had I not been an English teacher paid to teach the language, I’d have spoken thus to my students:

“Dear students, it is our birth right to make mistakes in English. We have no business to speak impeccable English. English is just another language like our own. Let us not forget that long before this Anglo-Saxon language took shape (post 6th century) we had highly evolved languages in India, and literature and sophisticated aesthetics in Tamil and Sanskrit. So why are drooling over this language which is but a reminder of our shameful history of subjugation? Agreed. English has its uses. Bur let us give it only the respect it deserves – that of a utility object, instead of allowing ourselves to be overawed by it. Even in UK, the concept of Standard English and RP is pooh poohed. Then why on earth are we striving to sustain those outmoded concepts? Do you think Tony Blair would be able to speak Malayalam like you and me even if he had learnt it as his second language?”

Only such a devil-may-care attitude can loosen the tongue of the Mallu.

Confessions of an Alienated Malayalee

yes. that’s me. I call myself that ’cos of my indifferent competence in my mother tongue. I think in Malayalam, but have no confidence to write in that language. I sometimes think if I could write in the language I think and feel in, I’d become the Shakespeare of Malayalam literature. Don’t laugh. this is how I console myself when I fall into one of those fits of depression at my inability express myself comprehensively – thoughts, feeling s and their nuances. The English language does not have corresponding terms to express malayalee feeling. Or, I am not competent enough in this angrezi tongue. So there is a huge gap between my sensibilities and the only language I can write in. Frustrating, isn’t it?

How did this happen? it’s a long story. I was born less than ten years after Independence. So guess I can call myself post independence generation. Those were days when people believed that future belonged to people who received education in English. I was a victim of that false notion. But, I did have Malayalam as a subject till 4th standard. But the Malayalam teacher took a dislike to me for a reason I don’t want to go into here(I have written a poem on that – so intense was my resentment towards that teacher who alienated me from myself). Unfortunately, along with me, that teacher was also promoted to the middle school. As soon as this news was confirmed, I went home and wept and wept till my mother agreed to switch my second language to French! With that, my connections with Malayalam text books, therefore literary Malayalam, were severed forever and ever.

Thus it is that my imagination was shaped completely by the angrezi language. They say if you learn a language, you tend to identify yourself wiith the culture of native speakers of that language. So my childhood imagination was filled with Jack and Jill, Polly putting the kettle on (I used to go around our kitchen looking for the kettle I saw in illustrated nursery rhyme books- found none), sixpence and pocket full of rye (thought that rye was the higher denomination of sixpence). Must say I used to be fascinated that the English could bake blackbirds in a pie and still keep them alive. Fortunately for me, I had a lot of neighbours, cousins from whom I picked up kakey, kaket, koodevidey?, Omana kuttan, govindan, ayyappandey amma, neyyappam chuttu. I sang these with full throated ease and felt I belonged. But when I sang the English rhymes, my imagination got activated and made me yearn for things I knew nothing of. Like they say, unheard melodies are sweeter. As I reached primary school, Enid Blyton was my staple food. and also all those comics – Three Stooges, Totem, Tin Tin, Classics, Richie Rich, Little Lotta - - - - . my horizons widened and without my quite knowing it, I moved away from my roots into a world I had never experienced. Along with it, an attitudinal change crept into me – a feeling of superiority over those who didn’t know the Famous Five and Captain Haddock!!

Soon, I started reading romances. Mills and Boons told me how the westerners fell in love, how hostility was an imperative prelude to love! How men had to be dark and tall ( I didn’t know then that, that dark was not our dark), that when men fell in love, they snapped at their lady loves for no reason. But i didn't know how people in love behaved in my culture! I soon got tired of Mills and Boons but Georgette Heyer remained my favourite for a long time. How she fired my imagination! her novels transported to a still more remote world - the Regency period, Victorian age - - -and I moved with wide eyed wonder among powder and patch, frills and gloves, lords and ladies and fops - --- Humour so pervaded her narration that I fell in love with the English language! My alienation from my own language was complete.

My estrangement from the imaginative world represented by Malayalam literature is the saddest thing that has happened to me. As I grew older, I moved into the world of English classics and poems. The breathtakingly beautiful paddy fields of Kerala skirted by beckoning coconut trees made me search for Wordsworthian terms to describe them. No muse works that way and the poet in me died. So did whatever creativity I had. Now I realize that one can create only in the language one thinks in, feels in - in the language that shapes one’s day to day life. I was trapped between two worlds – and was not resourceful enough to find a way out of this trap.

Today, I feel like a half baked creature. I fully realized what I lost when I got my first employment in a college in mid Travancore. my colleagues seemed to be at home with such a rich literature and culture. Jokes had to be explained to me and I didn’t find them funny. The humour was lost in the translation. Philosophical ruminations in Malayalam seemed part of the daily diet of my English department. And my colleagues felt guilty when they saw me trying to pretend I understood. Fortunately for me, my spoken Malayalam was extremely good. so I belonged as long as the conversation did not move into higher planes. But it did. too often. That is when I wrote that vitriolic poem about my Malayalam teacher who was instrumental in uprooting me even as I remained physically rooted.

WHITEFIELD: A SHANGRILA DESTROYED

Thirty years ago, when the name Whitefield was mentioned at home as a possible place to relocate to, it was to me just an English sounding name in the neighbouring state. Little did I think then that this sleepy little suburban village of Bangalore would create in me feelings of such intense nostalgia even today, a quarter of a century after leaving that place.
Strangely enough, not everyone residing in Whitefield responded to the place the way I did. Many who did not belong there but lived there for reasons of employment had plenty to complain. ( If all you need from life is bread, butter and beef, then Whitefield is just the place for you, Mr. Godrej used to grumble). But to me, time seemed to stand still – I seemed to have gone back some seventy-five years to a corner of colonial India where a number of Englishmen (who did not return to their motherland) settled down for a retired life.
Not that there was a single white man or woman in Whitefield – at least there were none to my knowledge. But there were a few hundred old Anglo Indian couples living there, and many of them had a Briton for an immediate parent. Far away from the rush of the city, they lived clinging to their British ancestry. They read with avid interest British newspapers and magazines (usually back issues) and maintained a non-native life style. Their homes were the most breathtakingly beautiful cottages that I have ever seen. They maintained them with fierce loyalty and whitewashed them during Christmas.
As you passed those cottages, aromas, which triggered off memories of food that you have never eaten but only read of, greeted your nostrils. In the beautiful little church that stood on a small hill, there was English service everyday in the morning and evening. The couples in their seventies, eighties and nineties attended the evening service. I remember the formidable Mrs. Tipsol, a widow who walked smartly despite her eighty odd years, leaning ever so slightly on her stylish walking stick. She would nod her cropped snowy head briskly at every passerby who dared to greet her. She would purse her scarlet lips in deep thought as she played bridge in the Whitefield Recreation Club. She would threaten with the walking stick the measly dog, which followed her wherever she went but would never beat him.
I remember the Chartons who were on the brink of ninety. They teased each other and were still very much in love! I can never forget the twinkle in Mr. Charton’s eyes when, in reply to my polite query, he said, “Dying inch by inch, my dear, inch by inch”
After the church service, some of the couples walked to the maidan of the Inner Circle to sit on the stone benches, while some disappeared into the Recreation Club. By seven, most went home to supper and then to bed. Most of them had resisted the TV – perhaps for fear it would shatter their make-believe world.
The Inner circle comprised cottages built in a circle around the maidan. There were a few huge, shady trees that flowered in blue and violet and yellow and flame and white. The sight took one’s breath away. The neat broad mud road that ran round the maidan was bordered by amazingly out- of- this- world cottages. The sheer fairy tale beauty of the sight brought a lump to my throat. For a mind reared on illustrated nursery rhymes and Grimm’s fairy tales and Enid Blyton, Wordsworth and George Eliot, the Inner Cirle was an impossible dream come true.
The locals too somehow fitted smoothly into the picture. The Kannadiga maid who came sweatered to my house at 6am on misty mornings greeted me with a ‘Morning Ma’am’ and used most naturally English words like garlic, mutton, onion, and parsley, and could prepare to perfection soups and jelly, country captain and apple pie!
I lived for five years in a cottage with low roof and a fireplace, in the heart of a five-acre orchard. My heart skips a beat when I remember the sound of the breeze gently rustling the leaves with its mild hum at night. My immediate neighbours were a couple, both above eighty-five, both half English. They rarely invited us in but were very cordial over the wall. Mr. Rodney could be seen even at noon in his pyjamas, sitting on the stone bench under the huge shady tamarind tree. Mrs. Rodney was often seen at the door of the cottage with a ladle in her hand, yelling at her husband.
I remember with amusement the day he called me excitedly with the ‘great news’. “Big wedding coming, Molly”
“Yes, Mr. Rodney? Whose?”
“ You didn’t know?”
He opened a magazine at a full-page picture of Princess Anne and her fiancé. I smiled politely.
“ You are not excited?”
“ Oh, yes, I am, Mr. Rodney”.

Today, not all my newly acquired desi sentiments can stay me from paying this tribute to Whitefield of yesteryears. I hear that Whitefield is horribly crowded today, and many of those couples I knew have been laid to rest. Those dream cottages have given way to high rises. I shall never go to Whitefield again. I want to preserve it in my memory as a relic of what I today describe as the hated imperialism. No amount of theory or patriotism can mute the singing of my heart when I look back at those five years in that sleepy village. For, nostalgia for an imaginary world created by Jack and Jill, and Polly of the kettle fame, found fruition in my life during those years.