World English Day

Yesterday, April 23, I learnt very recently from a Google Doodle made for the occasion, was the UN World English Language Day. It was chosen - not inappropriately, I believe - because it was the date on which William Shakespeare was born and also supposedly died. The UN decided in 2010 to observe the day every year as such. Their website article claims that today one in four human beings uses English in one way or the other. Both Shakespeare and Thomas Carlyle would have smiled: I think it was the latter who said towards the end of the 18th century that Shakespeare was more valuable to 'us' (the British) than the empire, and so it has turned out to be. Via Shakespeare, the very best of what it once meant to be English has been spread around the world. But certainly both Shakespeare and Carlyle would have been astounded to see how much and how diversely the language has changed since their times, and what people are doing with it these days. Although, come to think of it, as one of the supremely great creative artists of all time and therefore an inveterate experimenter and pusher of boundaries, Shakespeare would probably have been more amused than shocked.

English and Shakespeare have fed me all my life. Materially, aesthetically, intellectually and spiritually. My debt to them is immeasurable, but I thank them every single day.

However, in this context, as an observant and thinking man, I would like to put on record a few ideas.

1. If you learn English for a purely utilitarian purpose - to wit, passing school exams and getting a job - you are bound to learn it poorly, which you will gradually realize with dismay as the years roll by. If it is worth learning, it is worth learning well.

2. Don't be taken in by fancy labels and tall claims: many schools, coaching institutes and internet mentors don't know much English at all, and while they are eager to fleece you, they will teach you little, and what is worse, they will teach you a lot of things that are just plain wrong. Not knowing is much better than 'knowing' wrong things. 

3. You don't have to disrespect and neglect your native tongue in order to learn good English. Indeed, I lament the great disservice that has been done by (West-) Bengalis to their vernacular over the last fifty years in their haste to become slavish imitators of the sahibs: very few Bengalis can read, write or speak fluent and correct Bangla today, and that has rarely been compensated by a really good grasp of the English language. From Rammohun Roy to Satyajit, they have all shown that you can be equally a master of both Bangla and English.

4. English grants you access to all the great books of the world, ancient and modern, spiritual, artistic, philosophical, scientific and technical, as no single other language does, or is ever likely to. So learn English well in order that the doors of the world's knowledge can be opened widest for you.

5. Finally, do not let the latrine slush of social media push you down into the gutter of what used once to be called pidgin, or 'coolie English'. I have no intention of being called elitist, or a snob, or a 'grammar Nazi', but if you imagine that knowledge of language needs no discipline of the mind, no hard work, no sense of standards, you have lost sight of both culture and civilization. Remember, 'I does' is plain wrong, writing 'Sir was' when you mean 'Sir is' is not a small mistake, 'He stopped to look' and 'he stopped looking' mean exactly opposite things, saying a natural sight is 'sick' when you mean lovely is weird, brilliant engineering is not 'insane', everything in this world is not 'great' or 'amazing', nor is anyone cool because s/he is hot. It only means your brains have fallen out, and you have joined the ranks of the great (mentally-) unwashed. No glory in that, though there might be safety in numbers, of the kind that is appropriate only for quadrupeds.

Happy English learning to all.

Living inside an oven

My new batches have all begun, and there's a heat wave over southern Bengal, so it's all I can do to maintain my iron work routine - besides eating, reading, sleeping and chatting with old boys, that is: hence the delay in posting something new on the blog.

March was balmy this year, what with the three days of rain, but over the last two weeks summer has descended upon us with a vengeance. The Celsius breached 40 three days ago, and has been rising relentlessly. The Met has threatened that it might go close to 50, so I fear for us all, because those are killing temperatures. The evenings are, mercifully, cooling down rather quickly, and the air being very dry, the evaporation coolers are doing a great job, so this time round the tag of 'desert cooler' has suited them to a T: it indeed feels rather as though we are living in a desert. I feel most strongly for the poor kids who arrive for the mid-afternoon classes; stepping out of my cool, shaded classroom for even five minutes feels like walking into a blazing oven. No - I actually feel most for the crazy parents who wait out the whole class outside, since the children, after all, can sit and study in air conditioned comfort. I wouldn't have done it for my daughter, and I have grown tired and stopped trying to persuade these parents that it is simply not worth it. But when some of them enviously say 'apni khub bhalo achhen Sir', I laugh and say 'That is exactly why I decided to become a teacher long ago!' I wish the younger generation, at least the brighter ones among them, would think about it a little more seriously. Is it really so worthwhile to run around six days a week to make a living?

Meanwhile, I never stop thinking about a thousand things, and sometimes, when I sit down to wonder what I am going to write here this time, I am blocked by an embarras de richesses... I don't know which subject to select. Anyway, I have been thinking about what my old boy Swarnava sent me via text yesterday: something that some American said sadly in the 1960s, pointing out a malaise that has now spread worldwide. 'We are developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won't be able to think.' I wonder - would this make any sense to the citizenry that we see all around us today? Do they even know what it means to 'think', as distinct from reading posts on twitter?

One of the last books that my most favourite philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote towards the end of his long life was titled Has Man a future? It was written against the background of a possible all-out nuclear war, shortly after the Cuban missile crisis, and he was afraid of an imminent apocalypse. That crisis has probably passed for good, but the way I see it, maybe mankind is going to perish in a much less dramatic way, still owing to its own incurable follies. The words penned by Eliot keep echoing in my mind: This is the way the world will end... not with a bang but with a whimper!

Sorry about the gloom. It's probably the heat.