My Weak Written English -- II

The actual answer in my previous story was “Preacher”, I am sure my teacher will still remember me for this. After this, I happened to move to a new school for my 6th standard. Big leaders often boast in their portfolio that they went 10kms for their basic education [if any], I also did the same and I traveled about 18kms in the jam packed silver colored electric train, from Chromepet to Chetpat. I joined the MCCHS; when I took my entrance test everyone was watching as though Asish Nehra was taking a high dolly catch. Other than Nehra himself no one could predict the result. Likewise, no one other than me believed that I would pass this test. I don’t blame them at all my skill and my potential I displayed made people assume that I will definitely end up as a school dropout sooner or later. But “Vidhi” [Fate] had its own game plan I did get admission in MCCHS.
It was my first English class, my teacher started of with a great inspirational story.
A very rich Tamil parent wanted their kid to learn English. Since both of them were from Tamil medium, they had great hopes for their son to read and write English. Hence, spent big money and sent their kid to the best convent in the town. They went on telling everyone that their son would come home and call them “mommy” and “daddy”. They were very proud. Finally the day comes, he goes to school, and they wait all day expecting he would come back and call them “daddy and “mummy” and he comes back home and calls them…“Dummy” instead.

My English teacher told me this story that too on the first day of school, that’s it, my interest towards English went down to the lowest in my priority list. The blind Tamizan belief during that time was, good English is automatically cultivated if you force your kid into a “convent”, however as of today it is a fallacy , I am the best example to prove it.

Next, I would attribute my English downfall to game a called “Scrabble”, one more reason for my weak English. For people who have not played this game, it is a game where you arrange English words in Cross word style, each letter has fixed points and the grid will have bonus points like Double or Triple. For some weird reason the game creators awarded high points only to letters like X, Q Z, Y which people [not me] rarely use. The pity is people who introduced me to this game told me to score points rather than to learn the language. So I went to spell words based on points, like once I remember spelling “Socks” as “SOX”, just for the reason X has about 8 points. If “X” is placed on a triple point square! think about the score I would get, you may wonder why no one corrected me, being a natural “adAvadi” [bully] by birth no one dared to correct me.

by now my English was too weak hence I decided to take up another Indian language, “Hindi” But!, The world knows from my name that I am from Tamil Nadu. I was born, brought up and spoilt in the great city of Chennai. Or I call it as Republic of Madras.

The common feature you will find among 80s young breed from Chennai is their love towards the language called “Hindi”. The “kazagams” who rule my state have taught us not to learn Hindi. We all from the 80s supported this theory quite blindly. Took every word from them while the entire nation was conversing in this language we started to paint all the Hindi letters found in stations, banks with “tar” and felt very happy about it. This view on HINDI language continued for a long long time. Frankly it is very hard for anyone to guess the last Hindi movie that I watched on the big screen [theater] , Answer: “Qurbani”, I am not joking, I have never watched a Hindi movie in theater since“Qurbani” Though anyone could come to similar conclusion after watching Freoz Khan, Zeenat and Amjad khan in one screen, I never saw another Hindi movie again.

As of today, I failed to learn neither English nor Hindi properly. If you jump to a conclusion may be "his Tamil might be good", don’t blame me later, better check with Mr. Sundra Krishnan my Tamil teacher, he would vouch how I suck right royally there too.

With all this potential trust me I managed to pass out high school.