ABC of English and a Run backwards in time with myself and the language.

My love hate relationship struggle with English :

I still think in Hindi but I express my thoughts better in English. 

Why that is so ? I have no answer.

My recollection of the emphasis on English and its celebration of learning  goes back to the times I was a small child in kinder garden, my cousin who was a year elder to me learnt to say "YA" instead of a Simple "YES" and his mom was ecstatic about it.     "Ya" had arrived in life.

Education was of importance in childhood till the umbrella of my mother lasted and my father had this permanent expression that he had never gone to school. Oh yes ! I believed him for many many years. I guess it was his way of not participating in the activity.  

Time flew by, mother passed away, education was about going to school and coming back and going to play, for years together at an end. I don't remember my father ever asking me about homework or class work.  I don't remember much of the years that went by from class 2 to 7.

But what I do remember is the ignominy of the ridicule of an English teacher. Some teachers do have a way with words and  this particular English teacher did have a caustic tongue.  You never really know or understand the sarcasm or the intent of what they mean in those tender years.   But you do understand that it's not a word of praise. 

What changed my life was one simple expression by her :  

"If William Wordsworth could hear you speak, he would turn in his grave."

You may choose to correct my English in the previous sentence by stating that a sentence should not begin with a "BUT"  and make it the Butt of a joke for a future reference point but I have freed my mind of such rules of but and because cos there are no marks to be received.

That Wordsworth was a horrid man was something I was clear about because he wrote stuff that we were supposed to memorise and then recite in front of the class.  I was bad at both things - memorising was difficult but that I was bad at reciting is an understatement.  How bad was I ? Well it evoked the expression about Wordsworth turning in his grave. I guess it does not get worse than that.

Today I know for sure that Wordsworth did not turn in his grave, but at that point of time I imagined he would, because my teacher said he would, and I was responsible for his discomfort in his grave. (a child's imagination)

My non existent love for poetry and prose ended then and there,  so much so that even Shakespeare could not evoke any Interest in me even at the age of 16 when we had the coolest English teacher alive. 

Between this phase of my hate for poetry and dreading English class and the English teacher everyday, I found a new love. "Reading" reading English in particular cos Hindi was difficult to read and Munshi Premchand did not really write stuff for children to say the least. 

What started it ?  Library classes. 

Enid Blyton found her way into my life.  What started at reading a book a week became too less for me. I was soon exchanging rather borrowing books from other class mates who did not mind cos they probably never read at all, well definitely not one book a day.

So picture this  : I had read all the books in 4 years that could be read Famous Five,  Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and Agatha Cristie and Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes  what ever there was to read including lots of Dickens and Twain and even stuff which I did not care about.

For that matter the mission was to get to the end of the book. There was an urgency, an urge for no reason at all, I had this small dictionary at my side all the time cos I never had an elder to ask the meaning. 

Dad used to come home late evening. I was one book down by then.

 

In 1987, Dad put me in a school which was closer to home. All of a sudden from cycling 36 km to attend school, I was 1 km away so that meant more reading time. The school library was small, I had difficulty in finding unread books.  Made a new friend, Gorky. He read books, his mom read books his brother read books. God ! His entire family read books.  His home was full of books. At least twice a year a carton full of books used to arrive at his house from the USA from his uncle.  Well, so I graduated to reading stuff not meant for my age.  Jeffrey Archer happened, Alistair McLean happened Wilbur Smith happened, Earl Stanley happened, Ian Flemming happened. I really did not care what I was reading so long as it took me into a world away from the one I was living in and the subject matter interested me.  Then Dad opened another window to the world of books. "Booklib" the lending library of Universal Book Sellers in Lucknow Hazratganj.  So there I was on my cycle visiting a lending library every now and then. Now, Gorky used to visit the British Council Library too, with or without his mother. Dad got a membership to that too for me. But the organised quiet structure of a real library with the cards and the indexing kind of overwhelmed me. Buklib was better,  it had Tintin and Asterix readily available too. Shakespeare was not part of the list. 

Wren & Martin also did not make their mark in my life.

Verbs adverbs adjectives nouns pronouns were just words I knew, their meaning and definition always escaped my mind. At the age of 39, a class 2 student can strike me with a lightning bolt and leave be dumbfound and speechless by saying "please tell me sentences and I will identify the verb in each one of them." 

So in the end I was an average joe in English when it came to marks. I really did not care cos no one at home cared or made me care for marks, so long as I kept passing. Julius Caesar made his forced entry in 1989 and I escaped the imprisonment in 1990.

The ides of March and U2 Brutus is all that remains today, and the memory of Mrs Browne telling me that she expected me to be in the 90s which ended in 76 on the mark sheet of class X when all my friends made it to the 90s by the dozen because they could memorise the Man. I don’t think I came across anyone who did not hit the 90s back then.  Well I never lived up to expectations ( the word Expectations rings the Bell on "Great expectations" too ) or my potential, but in hindsight today,  it feels nice to know there was a teacher who believed in me.

One fine day at the age of 33 I went on to buy the complete works of Shakespeare @ 80 % discount. It was a steal. A premium author at a discount and that is why it is called Pulp and then Pulp Fiction and that’s a book I have still not read though it was made into a major Hollywood movie.   

Shakespeare remains unopened in the hope that my son, Arjun would one day more than just flip through it and every page would encounter some sort of light and enlighten the young tender unbiased mind.

As I write this he has found the love for reading at the age of 6, unlike me its not to escape from reality. 

All he wants to read are Geronimo Stilton's and he prefers Hard Bounds to paper backs, and he wants the entire collection, so I guess he is on the right path..

My English remains the way it is and I have no answers and no contribution to make when Pooja and Arjun are debating about the choice of "prepositions"................  By the way between the start and end of penning down this journey  I discovered I do not know about "articles" too.

This note to myself was penned in the month end of March 2014