Learning English language.

I must have been in class 6 in the Middle school section of Govt Higher Secondary School , Betma when I got fascinated with English as a language but the entire echo system around me neither encouraged nor provided any machinery to learn. There was no compulsion either to learn the language. I was interested in sports like Hockey, Cricket and Football but for all these, specially the first two the radio also had started giving running commentaries of important national and international events in Hindi. Thanks to Jasdev Singh for Hockey Commentary and Indore's own Sushil Doshi for Cricket's live commentaries that the only radio station Akashwani Indore was giving commentaries largely in Hindi. 1968 Mexio city Olympics must have been my first event when I was glued to radio, in a neighbour's house since we didn't have a radio at home, listening to Jasdev Singh and was getting excited with every match and with win until the semi final when India for defeated for the 2nd time since 1928 and secured only 3rd position. At the same time Sushil Doshi (later my Alma mater) mesmerised with the first ever Hindi commentary of a three day match (not a test) between India and NZ from Nehru Stadium, Indore. A promising young  Gundappa Vishwanath was playing Chandu Borde led India Board's eleven for the first time in Oct 1969 and had an impressive performance that led to his selection for India 11 a month later in the 2nd test against Australia in Kanpur in which he created a history by scoring a duck in the first and a 137 in the second innings. I remember how people at green park Kanpur got agitated and threw matkas in the field targeting vishy when he got out for a duck. Both these commentators were the best in their class to create a live match in front of you giving an account of every pass or every ball. 

So listening English for those matches was ruled out. I think by then the only word I had learnt speaking was YES. I remember having said that to someone watching us play a desi game in Poora Bazaar when he asked me in Hindi तेरा प्वॉइंट था क्या? ( Was it your point?)

English was always the most spoken language in the world. I am not sure if the statistic back in 1967-68 but I suppose in terms of percentage it must have been the same as it is today. When you look at 2019 statistics you find that English is spoken 50% nations of the world and nearly 15% of world's population speak the language that is marginally ahead of Chinese in terms of people who speak the language but that is because in China that is the most populous country in the world hardly any other language is spoken other that Chinese. But there are only five countries in the world where significant population speaks Chinese.

So the advantages of speaking English as first or second language were obvious for nations and for their people not just in terms of abundant information and knowledge that is available in English but also to expand business opportunities individually and collectively as a nation.

Knowing English had always had an advantage in India since past 300 years initially for trading with English speaking countries and later when the colonised us to communicate and put the local views forward to their masters who ruled us for nearly 200 years if not more. British did commit unpardonable atrocities on us and it was necessary to remember that only as a part of history, moving on in life for India was more important than to hate British because world has changed and continued to change. Dominance of English in life was not to be ignored anyway for the development of individuals as well as that of the nation. We already had a large number of English speaking people and it was one language that was common across the country although not spoken by masses at the time of independence of the country. But gradually that number was increasing and it had become the language for conducting business across the country and internationally. By no means, in my opinion, a language makes you slave or continues to have dominance of British over an independent nation. Had that been the case America would have developed an indigenous language different from English. Advantage of learning English language ( any language for that matter) are galore and we can go on and on in its favour.

However, during 1968-69  when I was in class 8th the right wing politicians started a campaign in the entire country against English under the banner "angrezi hatao/अंग्रेज़ी हटाओ" similar to Gandhi's Quit India movement in 1942 for English (people)to go. Some politicians, intellectuals and philosophers who advocated for the campaign were of the opinion that using English was a sign of slave mentality and thereby a hindrance to India's growth. Philosophically, people subscribing to this have not vanished as yet.. they believing hating English is same as hating English.. fisrt is the language and second being people who ruled us. It was an everyday event for over a year when these people, whose themselves had no brains to think and whose brains were corrupted by some politicians driving this movement to score a point, resorted to blackening anything written in English on signboards, busses or wherever. They also confiscated newspapers and books written in English and burnt them in the bazaars. It was such a terror that no one could dare speak or read anything in English even in privacy. Given this, it was obvious that the English language as an option was removed from high school so when I went to class 9th, I had no option to learn the language. My father had little knowledge of the language and he was not against learning the same but he could do little to help. My mother studied only till primary before her marriage at the age of 13+ and had done an equivalent of BA in Sanskrit from Bharti Vidya Bhavan practically self learning. So her teaching us English was also out of question. She also encouraged and taught Sanskrit to all of us and we all managed to pass short of the BA equivalent before we cleared our high school exams. I remember travelling to Kanvan, another village where my father was a teacher before we shifted to Betma, for appearing in those exams as that was our centre. Excelling in Sanskrit that time awarded me with a Sanskrit scholarship of Rs 250 per year in high school and that was big money that would take care of not just my school expenses but also all other money spent on me in a year. Although I was not in control of spending money, on my suggestions a smart ladies Henri Sandoz (a popular Swiss brand) watch was bought for my mother that stayed with her for many decades. HMT the popular Indian watch was either not around or had a queue of many years that time. 

I didn't know this is going to be a big disaster for me and my contemporaries who had faced this agitation. But all agitations fizzle out with time either with or without achieving the objective .. good or bad. In July 1970 when I entered class 10, the agitation had slowed down considerably at least the fizz had gone and when I opted English as an optional language, given the history of precious two years and my own zero knowledge of the language, I found that I was the only student opting for it and was assigned a teacher who in my opinion either not conversant or not interested in or was a sympathiser of the agitation. He reluctantly started with teaching me alphabets a,b,c,d...in so disinterested in the whole affair that he will simply ask me to write alphabets and go out for a smoke. This went on for a couple of months after which he stopped taking classes. 

You could understand my enthusiasm and disappointed at the same time. I didn't have enough courage to reach out to our new Principal Mr Aaraa Pandit (actually his name was Anand Rao Pandit, but he used to sign in Hindi as आ रा पंडित) who succeeded Mr Sabnis a year before. He was very approachable and good natured but that didn't encourage me to speak to him. 

Finally, in April we had the 10th board exams and for English, I was the only candidate. The exm paper was obviously in English and the only thing I understood from the exam paper was one question that said "write an essay on Jawaharlal Nehru, our first Prime Minister" that carried 20 marks. I kept looking at the question paper to make a meaning of other questions but failed. When I started writing the essay and barely had written 8 or 10 lines about JLN in my grand English, I thought to write more and to answer I need some support. I never shared to cheat and requested the invigilator if I could refer to the text book that I had kept outside the exam hall, he sternly brushed aside my request resulting in my declaring " I finished, sir" and handed over the answersheet to him so that he could also call it a day and may thank me for that.

When the results came I was happy that for writing those 10 lines or less I for 12 marks out of 100.. I don't remember what I wrote but I suppose these marks showed my love for Nehru and his blessings.

So that is the story of my learning English. I still suffer from the lack of formally learning the language. But for my approaching friends and anyone who knew the language well especially my friend Mahesh Tambe who came to was my roommate for over 4 years and my wife whom I could ask for corrections in spellings and grammatical mistakes anytime and anywhere over the last nearly 35 years, I wouldn't have been writing these stories in the language that would have remained alien to me, or is it still so? 

You decide.

Picture courtesy OLX.