LANGUAGE – FOR LOVE OR HATRED?

THE ENGLISH SKIRMISH

“Yes Madam, can you tell me what is wrong with the baby?”  I looked up at the enquirer, wondering who was it that spoke in English. “May I know who you are?”, I asked in the local language.

I was at the NICU counselling room of the hospital where I was a resident.  In a government hospital, which catered to the poorer sections of the society, rarely would anyone hear a patient or his relatives talking in English. So rare, that the patient would be referred to as the ‘English speaking patient’ or the ‘English party’ from admission till discharge, albeit with a bit of sarcasm. The speaker was a young man in his twenties, wearing a white t-shirt and jeans, and a sunglass hung from his jeans pocket, just enough to be identified. I sighed. Another one of those t-shirt-jeans-sunglass-English machan!! I knew what was to follow!

Do not mistake me, not that talking English was a problem, just that it was very rare and largely not required. Doctors from other states like me, made it our priority to learn the local language so that we can communicate with the patients effectively and understand them well. We used to sit in busy OPDs with a notebook having all the essential words in the local language and English- a tiresome exercise in the beginning, but slowly we ditched our notebooks and spoke the language well enough to ask, understand and reciprocate. So, when such doctors learn a new language without flaw, and hear a patient or patient`s relative whose mother tongue is the same language respond to them only in English, it gets on their nerves. Knowing English gave the patient an aura of importance among the less fortunate multitudes in the wards – it was like a halo of superiority seen only by the fellow patients and patient`s relatives. Many a time, the ‘English Party’ assumed a certain level of self-VIP-ship and expected  VIP treatment. They believed that speaking English automatically ensured better treatment, which was definitely a wrong notion.

Of course, they are not to blame. Despite gaining independence, India is still under the colonial rule when it comes to language. By default, Angrezi is glorified, and a person not having a hold on the language is depreciated. This would sound a bit hypocritical to be told by a blogger using English as the medium to communicate, but forgive me, English wasn’t my forte always. It is a language that I acquired, nourished and blossomed. When I changed school from state syllabus to ICSE syllabus in middle school, I was teased and put down for my lack of mastery over the language and suboptimal pronunciation. An avid reader, I lavished on whatever I could get hold of in English, and slowly the standards built up. Over time, it became one of my primary languages of verbal communication, and the main language on paper. I guess the pressure and competition around me made me capture it readily and pushed me to excel. And the race has not slowed down; fluency in English is one of the major job criteria anywhere in India. It’s a proud moment for parents to declare that their children do not know their mother tongue, but is fluent in English. Anywhere and everywhere, a person speaking English naturally assumes more importance than the non-fluent speaker. The same attitude continues when someone is a patient in a hospital as well.

Back in my residency days, it was a common sight to see villagers bringing their city-dwelling near/far relatives to shoot a few arrows in English and catch the unsuspecting doctor by surprise. And invariably all these ‘English machans’(the name I gave them) wore white t-shirt and blue jeans, and a vast majority of them had a pair of sunglasses barely hidden but revealed enough to be seen. May be it was a desperate try to fit in. The poor native language speaking patients used to watch the machan speaking in English with pride and awe. Some couldn’t help a smirk at the sight of the machan surprising the doctor and getting even with him/her. With experience, we learned to curb our shock and surprise at suddenly being caught unaware. On a lazy and relatively free day, we would respond normally and repeat all that we told the parents in local language to the machan in English. On a busy and tiring day, we had two ways to retaliate. One was to continue speaking in the local language, despite strong provocation by machan to change the medium of communication. The other was to throw at them the ‘ash-push’ English, with superior vocabulary and fake foreign accent, provided you were well versed with it. It was one of those days and I decided on the latter. I had already explained to the baby`s parents in detail about the condition, course and plans for the baby.

“Madam, I am short of time, I want to know Pooja`s baby`s condition!”, the machan standing in front of me demanded in a threatening voice and fluent English.

“I would be much obliged if I could know your name and relation to the baby”, I started with a fake and honey-sweet smile.

“Govind. I am his uncle.”

“Oh well, Mr Govind! Let me begin with a word of approbation for being the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious uncle of a remarkable baby. He was regrettably born as a preterm baby with inadequate lung surfactant and hence, increased surface tension which causes the alveoli to collapse and cause respiratory distress. We had appraised your baby with unambiguous respiratory scores and found that he needed artificial lung surfactant. After instilling surfactant in the requisite doses and later providing him continuous positive airway pressure, we have been able to alleviate his distress. Currently he is on oxygen via nasal prongs and he will be weaned off it soon. His feeding is being assessed, and as per his suck-swallow co-ordination, we have been pleased to initiate him on gavage feeds. We will be conducting a screening echocardiography shortly to assess his cardia. His improvement has been apposite and prompt and we hope for an expeditious recovery and discharge!”

“ Ahhh….well….yes I understand…Thankyou…”

I enjoyed hearing the threatening tone of his voice change to one of dismay and defeat. I enjoyed his confused and lost countenance.. I enjoyed seeing him struggle to explain to the parents the ‘verbal cholera’ that he just heard. I enjoyed seeing my intern`s jaw drop in shock. Yes, I enjoyed it all. I basked in the glory of my quick and easy success in the ‘English skirmish’. My heart swelled with happiness at having won the war of words.

It was not until much later that all of it came back hitting hard. How narrow-minded of me to engage in a needless duel with an unsuspecting lad.  I was conscience- stricken by my blinkered attitude. It took these people a lot of effort and boldness to come out of their villages and survive amidst the cut-throat competition and fast-paced life in the city. Learning English would not have been easy for them. Having a platform to show-case their hard-earned English fluency was a bonus. And it wasn’t wrong on the part of the poor patients to think that patient care will escalate with a few darts in English. Everyone glorified English and English-speaking individuals around them!! I was ashamed of my immaturity and bigotry.

There is something to learn from every encounter and every situation in our lives. Some experiences wilt our prejudices and fractionalize the sand castles that we build in the air. Some tear us down and break our heart, but we come out a better and stronger person. And then there are those that spark joy and breathe refreshment into our mundane lives. Somewhere distant in time, a few of these memories barge in when we least suspect them, and stay put to be ruminated upon, dissected carefully by our minds, and influence our character and disposition. And this was one such reminiscence, that brought about a discourse containing a thousand-odd words and a million-dollar lesson.

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Atticus Finch

(To Kill a Mocking Bird, Harper Lee)