An English Patient


I had never been outside Kerala until my summer in 2011, we traveled to Bombay to meet my Achan's cousins, a dream come true for a romantic like Beena who grew up on exotic Bombay locations in Malayalam films and occasional Hindi 'Bombay-rain songs'. For me, it was time to put my English lessons to 'speaking' because Vinod uncle and Razia aunty spoke broken Malayalam and Timiha knew only choru and vellam. By that time I had started this blog and was writing extensively in English, hoping someday to master the language and become a great storyteller. My uncle patiently sat with me, showed me how to write in MS Word to correct my grammar and spellings. Honestly, he stabbed my aspiring ego. A few years ago, I tried to fix my MS Word failed blog posts and gave up, it took me some time but eventually swallowed my pride to see my progression in our relationship. 

I wasn't a born reader or writer, Appu chetan pushed me into reading the comic strips he made, and the children's stories in English Tatteppa got from Trivandrum. When I started writing (only in English), I injected 'mouth wrangling' words and phrases so that it felt English enough, made no sense to me but I found immense satisfaction in it. We spoke only English in school, thanks to the institution that prohibited students from speaking in Malayalam on the school campus and the amusing rule to pay Rs 5 as a penalty for every Malayalam word they uttered inside the classroom. Beena by that time had become the VP of the school, the only thing  I remember as the Beena-VP connection is the Vote of Thanks that she had to deliver for every school anniversary day and the trauma she had to go through in preparing and practicing her English speech.Anyway, I loved 'basking in the sun', 'sipping apple juice' and 'hip-hopping' while I skipped plenty of words and phrases in between the stories that I read. 

I love stories, and English literature was my obvious pick when I went Bangalore for my bachelors, it took me some time to get a grip in the new place where I had to continuously translate in my mind from Malayalam to English before speaking. One of those days, 'the boy across the pond' happened to me. Thank you, Mickey, for all the efforts you took googling and brainstorming to figure what I was trying to communicate with this spunky language, and always encouraging me to keep writing. However, the struggle continued, I became more confident as I saw more people struggling to master it until the day this one woman walked into my masters' classroom in an elegant cotton saree and spoke about chutnified English, she encouraged me to think that its okay to Indianise English, its okay to not be a master at it, its okay that I speak in a mallu accent. I had then read a story, which I cannot exactly recollect but the plot was something like a group of people climbing down a hill, protesting while singing jazz music, to me the imagery consumed my relationship with English. Anyway, I did not make peace with English; we always fought with each other.Today, I realize that people like me lingering in colonial hangover can also be happy without trying not too hard to woo English. When I started reading and writing in Malayalam, more often than before, I see a more empowered me. Don't get me wrong,  I love my relationship with English. I still love my role as one of those 'mimic men' in this entire English fairytale journey trying to empower myself. I watched a Malayalam movie recently where the mother says " Englishil samsaricha mathy " to her daughter while attending a family function, coming from a middle-class Nehru fashioned mallu-family I could relate to the situation. Last summer I visited Bombay again, alone. The uncle and I, we spoke for a very long time and he curiously enquired about my writing. 

There has not been a departure from English, just that now I feel more confident with the MS Word. Today, I drink plenty of sugarcane juice with Afi while reciting all those stories I have ever read and I dislike watching mallu anchors on TV anglicising Malayalam. Appu chetan does not possess the creative streak anymore, I snatched it away from him, Tatteppa is my bestie, and we fight over Humbert's love for Lolita. Beena has made no progress in her story and I try experimenting with my writing so that one day my stories reach Mickey. You have no idea how incredibly happy I am to decolonize my mind while I quietly enjoy all the privileges it offers me on a daily basis. More than anything I am happy that I convinced Afi that Ashiq Abu is a really cool guy in mundu