A friend asked me to write a long letter about my stay in Calcutta. It has been two years since I have come to this city. Here is an excerpt from the letter...
:) a flood of memories come on to me like a giant wave. suddenly, i am reminded of a different time, where my city smelled of the sea whenever i turned east. where, all troubles could vanish if i just turned the bike towards the beach road. different times. so many people. a lot of moments. i am already there. wait, again, there is loyola college. how many coffees i had and how many spoons of sugar have i stolen from rishi. not a single haunt has been left unhaunted by me. the place at the side of bertram hall. the hostel. the cricket ground. hockey ground. football ground. the side of loyola church. the ictr. viscom dept. social work dept. chemistry dept. main block. landing. jubilee block. canteen. yrcs office. so many places. each with its own memories. there were days when i reached loyola at 7.30 in the morning and stayed on till 8.30 at the night. and now. everything is just a memory. the bad ones leave no longer a bitter taste. the good ones have become idealized into a dream. memory. i always says, that it is difficult for sense perception/experience to match up with memory. and so it is with chennai. it is now Madras. a distant, dream city. my home city by name. when i am angry with the world, i think of how i am stranded in calcutta. when i am in harmony with it, i look around and thank god for the many blessings that i have received here. life has been a good journey. sometimes difficult. sometimes easy. but always on the run. never in the same moment twice.
and suddenly, two years have gone by.
i have not dwelled on that thought too much. but two days ago, on the twelfth of may, 2008, i had first set foot in calcutta. Chinna and i had come here for me to take my entrance test. things did not go as expected. everything looked as if this trip would be reduced to being a short vacation to a city that i had never been to. but things changed. when i came to start a new life in calcutta, my dad took a transfer to work here in the same place as i. we moved into a small house. hardly 200 feet in dimensions. i did not have my bike. the trip to the university was a while away. i cannot say that i was not afraid. and still, things were interesting. challenging... more than anything else, always changing.
soon, i got back the comforts of my old life. i created a new life for myself. this beautiful city has opened its arms to me and taken me to her bosom. one thing i know for sure about calcutta is that, as a city, she teems with life. she has a distinct soul. she is beautiful. i learned more about life and myself. i have gained as a person. i have been guided from strength to strength. things keep looking better.
two years have gone by. not so suddenly.
I realized that I cannot write just one long letter about Calcutta. They always have to be many short ones. But here is a short list of those I thank. Not just in Calcutta. Not just FOR Calcutta. Not in any specific order.
...
.....
......
....
...
No. I still am afraid that I will miss many names.
So, thank you, all of you.
I love you all.
Thank you, Calcutta.
14 May 2010
13 May 2010
Oh that's why!
I am back from a ten day vacation just before the week of my exams with my family to the beautiful (mostly) hill-station-ridden Himachal Pradesh. Apart from the regular tourist haunts like Simla (horrible place - feels like an overloaded slice of a city crammed into a mountainous region; more on this later) and Manali (which is just a Mall road with a tourist offices to go to "higher" places), we also visited Dharamsala (or to be more specific, McLeodgunj). One thing that struck me about McLeod was the volume of foreigners in the town. Of course, you are thinking as you are reading, Saravanan, it is a tourist spot! Foreigners do come as tourists, see? Yes, I get what you are saying. However, I am not talking about, it-is-a-crowded-tourist-spot kind of foreigner density but like oh-my-freaking-god-we-are-strangers-in-this-white-infested-town kind of foreigner density. I sound racist here because almost all foreigners there were really white. Eastern Europe, America, Western Europe, old, young, suspect, dignified - they came in all shapes and sizes; but the common denominator was that they were all white. It might be a fact interesting to someone who is interested in such things; but not me, I am here to talk about a different kind of foreigner density.
While going from McLeod to Manali, we met a bunch of travellers from Europe on the coach. With a seating of just 9 people, interaction between passengers were cordial in that 10 hour trip.
There were some obvious, almost rhetorical if not for the faith of the asker, questions;
(from my incredulous mother to a very British and ageing home-maker); You are travelling without your husband and children?
(from a bewildered chai-wala to me about one of my co-passengers); How can he speak such good Hindi?
There were also the polite questions which lead to some really interesting facts;
(from my unsuspecting mother) How long have are you in India?
Mikhail says; We have been here just five months. (Indians in the coach stunned) We have no time, to see many places. (Indians stop understanding; a vacation beyond TWO WEEKS!)
I hate answering questions. Unless I am in the right frame of mind, I even hate talking. So I dreaded the polite question that would be directed to me. Waited for it to get over, that I may go back to the book I was reading.
What do you do in Calcutta?
I am pursuing my Masters.
Which subject?
Literature. English.
(Its the Israeli woman's turn to be relieved) Oh? That is why your English is so much better than ours. (A round of laughter all around)
Was it a laughter of relief or pride? Both. From different parts of the coach.
That is when I was acutely aware of the difference between the people in the coach. In that sentence and the stress on that word, there was an underlying principle in action. A simple and ancient one called syllogism. Let me give an example how it works.
Fact 1: All cats die. Fact 2: Socrates died. Therefore, Socrates must be a cat.
Let me rephrase this in context.
Fact 1: English Literature students know the language better than others. Fact 2: Saravanan is such an aforementioned student. Therefore, Saravanan knows the language, etc etc.
Does not seem harmful, does it? Maybe it is just as innocent as it appears. The logic ACTUALLY looks sound. Wait, it must be so. I perhaps am being too paranoid. Seriously. She is a good-natured, hardworking, mother of three in her mid-50s. She cannot have spoken what she did with malice.
Then it struck me harder.
She does NOT speak with malice. It is a given for her. It is a fact and an undeniable axiom to her. Now the syllogism comes back to me. Not in what was spoken but in what was omitted.
Fact 1: The only way an Indian, who has not even seen the Continent in real life, can speak English with some authority is by having studied it over a significant period of time. Fact 2: Saravanan is one such aforementioned person. Therefore, This is the ONLY LOGICAL CASE where he should be able to speak in such comfort this alien tongue.
For a moment, I raged against myself. I did not speak another word to any of the Others in the coach. The journey ended but not my anger. How dare she think that I am a natural inferior who cannot speak the language of the white man better than her? It took me a few days for the blanket of anger evaporate. It struck me then; WHY IN HELL WAS I MAKING ENGLISH-LANGUAGE-SPEAKING, THE QUALIFIER FOR SUPERIORITY?!??!
Then it all came back to me. Of course she is right in assuming that a person is not comfortable in a NON-native tongue. Some are linguists/experts who have spent countless years dedicated to their pursuit of knowledge in a different tongue. But the general crowd did not. If people learned English in countries like Israel, it is only to get along in countries where their own tongue was useless. They barely made sentences. Their scholars of the language were in big Universities. The smirk I had on my face when I thought, oh, every child at 15 years of age in a city-school in India can speak better English than you; vanished. It turned to shame. Why was it that such a thought gave me so much pride? What was the big fucking deal about speaking English anyway? Now her syllogism which had once appeared foolish and narrow-minded, now felt like a golden nugget of wisdom. It became clearer to me. This time, the dignity came unforced.
Fact1: No sensible person would give such importance to an alien tongue as to have mastered it if there was not some special interest attached to it. Fact2: MA in English qualifies such a special interest. Therefore, Saravanan's language is such and such.
I was happy that this time, when I removed my name from the preliminary facts, a humbler path led me to a more fulfilling answer. I was happy.
But then I realized that I was writing all this in English.
Nothing had changed.
There was not much I can do. After having invested heavily in this area for a large part of my life, I cannot walk away from what I have gathered. So, the cause is a tragedy. Nothing can happen.
But wait; there is hope.
I decided, that I will continue writing in English. Except. I shall write in 'e'nglish.
And that is how the "capital"ism in english ended.
While going from McLeod to Manali, we met a bunch of travellers from Europe on the coach. With a seating of just 9 people, interaction between passengers were cordial in that 10 hour trip.
There were some obvious, almost rhetorical if not for the faith of the asker, questions;
(from my incredulous mother to a very British and ageing home-maker); You are travelling without your husband and children?
(from a bewildered chai-wala to me about one of my co-passengers); How can he speak such good Hindi?
There were also the polite questions which lead to some really interesting facts;
(from my unsuspecting mother) How long have are you in India?
Mikhail says; We have been here just five months. (Indians in the coach stunned) We have no time, to see many places. (Indians stop understanding; a vacation beyond TWO WEEKS!)
I hate answering questions. Unless I am in the right frame of mind, I even hate talking. So I dreaded the polite question that would be directed to me. Waited for it to get over, that I may go back to the book I was reading.
What do you do in Calcutta?
I am pursuing my Masters.
Which subject?
Literature. English.
(Its the Israeli woman's turn to be relieved) Oh? That is why your English is so much better than ours. (A round of laughter all around)
Was it a laughter of relief or pride? Both. From different parts of the coach.
That is when I was acutely aware of the difference between the people in the coach. In that sentence and the stress on that word, there was an underlying principle in action. A simple and ancient one called syllogism. Let me give an example how it works.
Fact 1: All cats die. Fact 2: Socrates died. Therefore, Socrates must be a cat.
Let me rephrase this in context.
Fact 1: English Literature students know the language better than others. Fact 2: Saravanan is such an aforementioned student. Therefore, Saravanan knows the language, etc etc.
Does not seem harmful, does it? Maybe it is just as innocent as it appears. The logic ACTUALLY looks sound. Wait, it must be so. I perhaps am being too paranoid. Seriously. She is a good-natured, hardworking, mother of three in her mid-50s. She cannot have spoken what she did with malice.
Then it struck me harder.
She does NOT speak with malice. It is a given for her. It is a fact and an undeniable axiom to her. Now the syllogism comes back to me. Not in what was spoken but in what was omitted.
Fact 1: The only way an Indian, who has not even seen the Continent in real life, can speak English with some authority is by having studied it over a significant period of time. Fact 2: Saravanan is one such aforementioned person. Therefore, This is the ONLY LOGICAL CASE where he should be able to speak in such comfort this alien tongue.
For a moment, I raged against myself. I did not speak another word to any of the Others in the coach. The journey ended but not my anger. How dare she think that I am a natural inferior who cannot speak the language of the white man better than her? It took me a few days for the blanket of anger evaporate. It struck me then; WHY IN HELL WAS I MAKING ENGLISH-LANGUAGE-SPEAKING, THE QUALIFIER FOR SUPERIORITY?!??!
Then it all came back to me. Of course she is right in assuming that a person is not comfortable in a NON-native tongue. Some are linguists/experts who have spent countless years dedicated to their pursuit of knowledge in a different tongue. But the general crowd did not. If people learned English in countries like Israel, it is only to get along in countries where their own tongue was useless. They barely made sentences. Their scholars of the language were in big Universities. The smirk I had on my face when I thought, oh, every child at 15 years of age in a city-school in India can speak better English than you; vanished. It turned to shame. Why was it that such a thought gave me so much pride? What was the big fucking deal about speaking English anyway? Now her syllogism which had once appeared foolish and narrow-minded, now felt like a golden nugget of wisdom. It became clearer to me. This time, the dignity came unforced.
Fact1: No sensible person would give such importance to an alien tongue as to have mastered it if there was not some special interest attached to it. Fact2: MA in English qualifies such a special interest. Therefore, Saravanan's language is such and such.
I was happy that this time, when I removed my name from the preliminary facts, a humbler path led me to a more fulfilling answer. I was happy.
But then I realized that I was writing all this in English.
Nothing had changed.
There was not much I can do. After having invested heavily in this area for a large part of my life, I cannot walk away from what I have gathered. So, the cause is a tragedy. Nothing can happen.
But wait; there is hope.
I decided, that I will continue writing in English. Except. I shall write in 'e'nglish.
And that is how the "capital"ism in english ended.
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