An English Education

" Did you read in a convent? " is an oft repeated question.....My Proff asked me recently.

Its perhaps the idea that people get when they say I have a good command over the language. G used to say he liked my vomity style of writing when I wrote the good old Appendixedmusings. Well I have a few things on my mind right now about that. But honestly I don't know.

I think I have an okay English. People have said the language you can master is the language you dream in. Well in the days when I used to dream extensively, in monochrome and polychrome, it was always English. I was never very good at expressing in Oriya, chiefly because I did not read that much Oriya. And I read quite a bit of English, still do, thanks to my sister who got all the books and gave it to me for reading. I used to live with my sister and grandmother. Our parents were mostly posted at different places which meant we basically looked out for each other. And by the amount of liberty this gave to two young women in that age it meant that when we went shopping we purchased Robert Ludlums and Fredrick Forsyths by the dozens, she often spending her entire pocket money of 6 months on them. We never bought Mills and Boons, and maybe just one or two Harold Robbins....My parents were worried what we did with so much books. But they could not do more than grumble a bit ( And certainly not be able to read any of them, the reason for which I understand now since I have taken Medicine)

It all began on a winter day in Cuttack.I never had a proper Red sweater for my uniform. The first one a bit 'Light Red'; the second was a bit ' Dark Red', and since Cuttack winters are a monthly affair where sweaters are worn for a month to be hastily cleaned and put in the cupboard, 3 sweaters worn for 8 months covered 8 years with remarkable efficiency.

So when my Principal called this girl from 4th standard to come and tell her experience about her trip to Delhi to collect a National Talent Scholarship, I was only worried the small hole in my sweater at the back of my elbow would not show itself to anyone. I spoke something or the other, what came to my mind, and after I spoke I saw her approach me her eyes glistening against that morning sun on my face. She picked me up to follow to the dias my heart thumping and praying she should not do anything stupid to my hand like shake it or something.

" Now I am happy that when my kids go to receive awards, they don't have any difference from the students of Convent or Stewart...At least they donot speak in broken English..." And up went my hand firmly held by her, half my body lifted off along with it, as she lifted mine like refrees do to a boxer who wins the game. Amidst the resounding claps, my heart thudded with shame. I did not behave properly with anyone at home those few days. The sweater was changed within the next week as I refused to go to school wearing it.

True, I was taught by tutors with a English background. My first English teacher was from Stewart School, the stalwart of all schools in Cuttack, the Big Brother school. I went to his huge study lined with about a few hundred dictionaries and thesaurus and the " Compact Oxford Dictionary of English Language", a one feet by half and 15 inches tall book. I sat edgily on his swivel chair. 'What is the meaning of Vocabulary?'
'Its Word Power, Sir'
'Very Good'
This followed a few more questions in English I could have answered 2 years back.
He took me in.
By then I had finished Gone With the Wind. He did not know that until much later when he asked me to comment on a line of poem.

My school was SCB Medical Public School. A small school in a compromised plot of land granted by the College authorities of the big one, SCB Medical College. It was built entirely out of a wish of the College Staff chiefly to have their kids read in a school that would be easy for them to pick up. Notable only for the admission test, which was the toughest in the city, a nice staff ( most of whom had left by the time I had grown enough for them), and best, the type of students every school would want ( like an entire class 90 percent of whose students played GK in a free period without being asked to...that was mine..the 98 batch). 70 percent of the students belonged to some Hospital worker, from the HOD Medicine to the Sweeper. Needless to say, it bagged more Limca Quizzes, Bournvita Quizzes and Debates than any other. I went into the latter, then I also had a voice. But I never proved good at Debates which had judges who looked for content. I always wrote my debates after the first two or three which my father helped me with. I mainly won where the judges perhaps looked for spontaneity. I mostly spoke extempore. And I did well in Science quizzes. Immaterial stuff but by 8th standard I was dreaming of using the prize cups as glasses, and even flower vases. And the number collected by me and my sister grew so much that they were huddled in bags and kept on top of one shelf or the other.

I am not saying this in a fit of complacence. For me the choice was simple. I thought the answer to my problems would come from doing well academically. I not only did well academically, I more like swept the works. But it didn't work for me. I don't know if it would have been better if I had known it then. Or if given the chance I would have been a maverick, or a typical conventee as students in Cuttack have to say, a well dressed girl with a raucous English who is a flapper, meaning little. Studies were never difficult. I enjoyed them. I was never systematic. I had read the whole of Morrison and Boyd Organic Chemistry and Resnick and Halliday Physics. I wanted to be in Medicine but I was scared of Biology and had a poor memory. I couldn't do Irodov because I did not do Mathematics after school. And i was one of the fastest in Mathematics at school. I was logical but not systematic. I was knowledgeous, but not smart. I had common sense, but not strategy. I was basically confused. And now while I am a doctor, I look up Computer Magazines on the net rather than look up articles in Medicine. That doesn't mean I don't like to be in Medicine. But I have a feeling I am not dedicated enough. My mind has a thousand ideas. I have seen some people and I know what dedication means when I have seen them toil endlessly to help those in need. I am not sure I fit the bill. I want to climb mountains and create a web site, know about MS Office and its tricks and nuances and hack sites that are password protected. True I want to serve people as an end result. But its not the sole thing on my mind. Its not the article on Lancet so much as it is hacking Lancet to get that article...Anyways leave it.....

So that is how my education went. Mostly on an Obsessive Compulsive basis. I gape when I hear my Co-PG enumerate scoring systems...I only understand things when I try them for myself, read them for myself, or see them for myself. I think this amount of disrespect is almost sacrilegeous in Medicine. But I cannot change it. i will only learn what I want to learn. Not what is asked of me to learn.

My days in School were as fast as I spoke the news headlines, always extempore..I used to be addicted to reading the paper 2 hours a day, a habit I have now shrugged compulsively to the point when my General Knowledge is abysmally low. My English teacher had said this, ' Sucharita comes, she speaks and she goes; and then we start listening what she has said'.

To the convent education in Cuttack, I am still glad I dod not go, I picked the best of the learning without accepting the whole package. The teachers I went to had me as one of their favorites amongst their ones from the Convent or Stewart. To this day, I would possibly still be counted as a student with one of the best English thats for anyone to boast. I did not lisp other people's lines nor quoted text. I spoke my own mind. Still do. My Prof Liked my English the day I entered his room. Maybe it had to do with the Hans Christian Anderson my mom bought for me instead of teddies and bunnies and comics when I was 4. I am more like the first generation robots in I, Robot. We will stand in line no matter how free we are. I will always watch movies alone, prefer a novel to a party and be as unsocial as a anemone. Its merely the instinct. There is nothing great about it. A lot of it came from my mother's effort to educate me precociously, from my brother's tremendous education in all things out of the ordinary...and for my idea that things will become okay if I am okay. And my education in SCB was deliberate, I was one of the top entrants to Stewart that year. But some one put a notion in my doctor parents' head that kids in Stewart did drugs....And I remember the reaction of my friends from Stewart when I told them this.

My interest in English arose out of a fascination for the wealth of knowledge it gave me. Both of us sisters were voracious readers. We never had teddies, or video games, or comics. We read Shakespeare, Dickens, Forsyth and more and more...

English is not a language, its not even an issue. It just happens to be the medium I will use to communicate in, if I meet a person from America. If people talked in binaries, I would love to go 10001101100011001....

let me show you an example of what good English is all about....

Needless to say, its from a guy from Stewart school...

http://imzeitgeist.blogspot.com/2006/11/that-name-on-merit-list.html