It isn’t just a feeling nor an experience nor a story but a saga… The language of English in my life….

Those were the days when I used to practice the alphabets on a slate with my mother sitting next to me. The two important things to be remembered are to read out the alphabets aloud as you practice and not to wipe the slate with my saliva…

Days passed by and I was all set to write the kindergarten entrance test. The teacher asked “write ABCD”. Which type I questioned her back. “How many types do you know” she exclaimed. “Capital letters and small letters” I replied. “Write all that you know” she said with a smile. After an hour or so I remember the happiness in my dad’s eyes when the teacher was surprised with my performance and declared me a prodigy. Unfortunately that’s the last time I saw him happy about me… Since then I kept on failing one or the other exam every year till my masters, including the driving license exam. Well all that is a different story but let me for now discuss the English part of my life.

So later in school English was just another subject and never much of a problem. “Remember dictation and easily 10 marks… pass…” I remember the bindaas attitude with which I used to motivate my worried friends. But suddenly in my 6th standard I joined a missionary school where English was not just another subject but a way of life sorry THE way of life. If you want to go home you need to finish your day at school without uttering a single word in your mother tongue. Forget about grammar I used to forget the tense too. “yesterday I had coming to ground. Nobody playing football. Tomorrow also you coming” are a few pieces from the conversations I used to have. Sentences like “I am suffering with fever” & “I prefer coffee more than tea” used to appear in the correct the following section and I used to laugh at the ignorance of my English teacher and later appreciate his intellect to confuse the students and then attribute things to printing mistakes and a few days later on receiving the valuated answer sheets repent for everything.

But as time passed by I struggled a lot, and my teachers, wren and martin, The Hindu came to my rescue and by the end of my schooling I was decent enough at my language. I was satisfactory with my language skills when all of a sudden I landed up in a city only to know that my English was meant for exams and not for conversations. I had to practice the “hey Guys! Howz you! me cool man! You gonna sneak in! I wanna chill out and you know stuff like that! huh” My failure track record having been stated in the paragraphs above It took me couple of years, you know, to get that stuff and all! Huh!” This was more of unlearning that happened to me than learning. Forget punctuation, when ever you go blank just say “stuff like that”, if you want to make friends keep saying “cool” in response to everything the other fellow says and if the other guy is really in problems then keep saying shit. And if all these things you forget then there is one amazing word that can be used in pain, happYness, fun, havoc, horror, joy, anger, rage or anything for that matter and that is F**K! I was happy that I mastered the language but in no time I found out I was already obsolete.

The sms I got today says “hey! u cmng 2 thtr st. tkts r rsvd. wt 4 me nr c’day” which actually meant “Are you coming straight to the theatre. The tickets have been reserved and do wait for me near coffee day. They call it English….