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I have a confession to make...I could never follow English spoken by 'foreigners' like Englishmen and Americans.
IIT KGP, where I worked, was a cosmopolitan place by and large. So I can place the mother tongue of most speakers of Indian English...Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada...not to speak of Telugu...by their English accents.
But English spoken by anyone else foxes me.
At Muthukur, where I had my schooling till School Final, we never spoke English at home or in school. The medium of instruction was Telugu except in the English classes of Class XI which my Father took with a vengeance.
When I started living in my Shakespeare Uncle's home for my one-year Pre-University course, we had a Murphy radio set commandeered by his daughter who was just married and still staying home. She always tuned it to Radio Ceylon which belted out Hindi film songs. I was hooked to them alright. Neither she nor I understood a word of Hindi but it didn't seem to matter.
At 9 PM, after we had our dinner, Uncle used to lie down on his cot and ask my cousin to tune the set to AIR for its English news...he never learned how to tune radios then...like I have to ask Ishani to tune her HD TV set to Times Now these days once in a while.
And Uncle would listen keenly to the English news and would be fast asleep by the time it was over by 9.15...he was a lark and would wake up at 4 AM by the alarm.
Listening to the English news was a miserable experience to me...I was the topper in English throughout my career but I couldn't follow a word of what went on. It started with the cuckoo clock in the studio cooing nine times and went like:
"This is All India Radio...News in English read by Melivelle de Mellow..."
The rest was gibberish. I guess I could have followed the news if it was read by Appa Rao.
Then I went to Vizagh to study Physics in my university there. The medium of instruction was English there...but all our teachers were Telugus...so I could follow every word of what was spoken.
But once in a while my friends took me to Leela Mahal which was dedicated to screening Hollywood movies. Some of them did laugh once in a while during the shows...but not me. Apart from the titles, not a word sank in.
'Guns of Navarone' was a great movie...I enjoyed it immensely since it was an Action Film and there was little need to follow dialogues. Only one sentence I could follow...that was the scene where the hunk, Anthony Quinn, writes on a piece of paper: "Keep talking" and hands it over to Gregory Peck, David Niven and the rest of them in the war-room before he suddenly opens the door and bashes up the keyhole-listener.
At IIT KGP we had this Netaji Auditorium which used to screen a couple of Hollywood movies every month. Since I had paid for the monthly card, I used to go there once in a while when my friends told me that the movie of the week was a block buster. I once happened to watch an award-winning film called: 'Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf?' starring Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. It was all dialogues and no action scenes...I sat through it only to watch the tantrums of Liz.
Of course I enjoyed the film 'Fast Lady'...it was a car with a crazy driver.
After coming to Hyderabad my son once rented a CD of the movie, "The Great Train Robbery (1979)" starring Sean Connery. And I said it was no use since I can't follow dialogues of English films. And he said it had subtitles. That was great, I thought. I must have watched that movie a dozen times by now but spent most of my time reading the subtitles instead of watching what went on.
Four years ago I was driving my D-i-L to her workplace at Balanagar from Khairatabad...a distance of about 10 km on the busy 'Bombay Highway'. And there was this Y-Junction where I had to take a right V-turn and so had to enter the right lane a few hundred meters before. And I was always missing it and creating havoc...once I was rebuked by the traffic cop but I gave it to him in my Bullet-English and he fell silent and let me go.
One day however I was immensely pleased to see a giant flexi-board ad spanning the entire horizon just before the Y-Junction. And it acted like a light house beacon to me asking me to swing into the right lane. It read in huge letters:
And I thought it was a school started by the Probasi-Bengali community here. Till I read about it in DC and came to know that it was a chain of Hyderabadi Spoken English Schools.
Why fish?...I don't know.
When my son was in the Nursery class at the St Agnes School at KGP run mostly by Anglo-Indian ladies, we parents were asked NOT to speak to our kids in English at home. I asked why. And came to know that we speak English with the wrong accent and that would spoil the Spoken English of our kids forever...instead of the Anglo-English they taught in school.
It is different with Ishani in Hyderabad these days.
In the first Parent-Teacher Meeting Ishani's parents had with her teacher (a Bengali lady), they were told to speak in English at home so that Ishani picks up good spoken English. My son is an expert is speaking Hollywood English...he has to convince his American customers and bosses that he is damn good at his job...and my D-i-L also had a convent education.
So they try to speak in English with Ishani when they suddenly remember her teacher's commandment.
But I speak with Ishani only in Telugu. I had always spoken in Telugu when it is understood by my listeners.
I guess it is ok...Ishani's parents never asked me speak to her in my English.
The other evening Ishani was in the kitchen doing her home-work...writing the letter G a dozen times under her mom's guidance...her mom teaches at 'Euro Kids' nowadays.
I happened to go there for filling my water bottle.
And Ishani looked up, saw me, started chewing her pen thoughtfully, and asked me:
"Thatha, do you know English?"
And I demurred...
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I have a confession to make...I could never follow English spoken by 'foreigners' like Englishmen and Americans.
IIT KGP, where I worked, was a cosmopolitan place by and large. So I can place the mother tongue of most speakers of Indian English...Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada...not to speak of Telugu...by their English accents.
But English spoken by anyone else foxes me.
At Muthukur, where I had my schooling till School Final, we never spoke English at home or in school. The medium of instruction was Telugu except in the English classes of Class XI which my Father took with a vengeance.
When I started living in my Shakespeare Uncle's home for my one-year Pre-University course, we had a Murphy radio set commandeered by his daughter who was just married and still staying home. She always tuned it to Radio Ceylon which belted out Hindi film songs. I was hooked to them alright. Neither she nor I understood a word of Hindi but it didn't seem to matter.
At 9 PM, after we had our dinner, Uncle used to lie down on his cot and ask my cousin to tune the set to AIR for its English news...he never learned how to tune radios then...like I have to ask Ishani to tune her HD TV set to Times Now these days once in a while.
And Uncle would listen keenly to the English news and would be fast asleep by the time it was over by 9.15...he was a lark and would wake up at 4 AM by the alarm.
Listening to the English news was a miserable experience to me...I was the topper in English throughout my career but I couldn't follow a word of what went on. It started with the cuckoo clock in the studio cooing nine times and went like:
"This is All India Radio...News in English read by Melivelle de Mellow..."
The rest was gibberish. I guess I could have followed the news if it was read by Appa Rao.
Then I went to Vizagh to study Physics in my university there. The medium of instruction was English there...but all our teachers were Telugus...so I could follow every word of what was spoken.
But once in a while my friends took me to Leela Mahal which was dedicated to screening Hollywood movies. Some of them did laugh once in a while during the shows...but not me. Apart from the titles, not a word sank in.
'Guns of Navarone' was a great movie...I enjoyed it immensely since it was an Action Film and there was little need to follow dialogues. Only one sentence I could follow...that was the scene where the hunk, Anthony Quinn, writes on a piece of paper: "Keep talking" and hands it over to Gregory Peck, David Niven and the rest of them in the war-room before he suddenly opens the door and bashes up the keyhole-listener.
At IIT KGP we had this Netaji Auditorium which used to screen a couple of Hollywood movies every month. Since I had paid for the monthly card, I used to go there once in a while when my friends told me that the movie of the week was a block buster. I once happened to watch an award-winning film called: 'Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf?' starring Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. It was all dialogues and no action scenes...I sat through it only to watch the tantrums of Liz.
Of course I enjoyed the film 'Fast Lady'...it was a car with a crazy driver.
After coming to Hyderabad my son once rented a CD of the movie, "The Great Train Robbery (1979)" starring Sean Connery. And I said it was no use since I can't follow dialogues of English films. And he said it had subtitles. That was great, I thought. I must have watched that movie a dozen times by now but spent most of my time reading the subtitles instead of watching what went on.
Four years ago I was driving my D-i-L to her workplace at Balanagar from Khairatabad...a distance of about 10 km on the busy 'Bombay Highway'. And there was this Y-Junction where I had to take a right V-turn and so had to enter the right lane a few hundred meters before. And I was always missing it and creating havoc...once I was rebuked by the traffic cop but I gave it to him in my Bullet-English and he fell silent and let me go.
One day however I was immensely pleased to see a giant flexi-board ad spanning the entire horizon just before the Y-Junction. And it acted like a light house beacon to me asking me to swing into the right lane. It read in huge letters:
TEACHING FISH
And I thought it was a school started by the Probasi-Bengali community here. Till I read about it in DC and came to know that it was a chain of Hyderabadi Spoken English Schools.
Why fish?...I don't know.
When my son was in the Nursery class at the St Agnes School at KGP run mostly by Anglo-Indian ladies, we parents were asked NOT to speak to our kids in English at home. I asked why. And came to know that we speak English with the wrong accent and that would spoil the Spoken English of our kids forever...instead of the Anglo-English they taught in school.
It is different with Ishani in Hyderabad these days.
In the first Parent-Teacher Meeting Ishani's parents had with her teacher (a Bengali lady), they were told to speak in English at home so that Ishani picks up good spoken English. My son is an expert is speaking Hollywood English...he has to convince his American customers and bosses that he is damn good at his job...and my D-i-L also had a convent education.
So they try to speak in English with Ishani when they suddenly remember her teacher's commandment.
But I speak with Ishani only in Telugu. I had always spoken in Telugu when it is understood by my listeners.
I guess it is ok...Ishani's parents never asked me speak to her in my English.
The other evening Ishani was in the kitchen doing her home-work...writing the letter G a dozen times under her mom's guidance...her mom teaches at 'Euro Kids' nowadays.
I happened to go there for filling my water bottle.
And Ishani looked up, saw me, started chewing her pen thoughtfully, and asked me:
"Thatha, do you know English?"
And I demurred...
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