V is for Ventriloquist #atozchallenge

"Ventriloquist is someone who...." 

A muffled thud made me stop and look up. I was reading a story in Red class, year 1, at 3 in the afternoon. The bell to go home would ring in less than ten minutes. This was our daily routine--story time to end the day. It was also my favourite time. There is a kind of magic that happens when you read to a group of children. 

Muffled clattering followed the muffled thud.

I got up from the chair I was sitting in, designed for six year old children, and stood up to peer across the room.

"Mrs G?" I called out to our class room assistant.

She was sitting behind the table that marked the end of our carpet area (which is where all the children were gathered for story time) on a short chair, similar to mine, when I started reading the story.

So I pitched my question in that direction.

A hand shot up from behind the table. It belonged to Mrs. G.

"Mrs G...what happened? Are you okay?"

All the little heads that were facing me now turned to face the direction my question was aimed at.

A few muffled noises which sounded like sobs to me came from behind the table. 

"Ellie, can you and Ryan read the Hungry Caterpillar for us please?"

Conor had swung into action before me. He was spread on top of the table, ninja style, to find out where Mrs G was.

"The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Miss...you mean, right?"

Ellie was the best reader in class and also the most pedantic.

I nodded and sprang across the carpet area, scooped Conor off the table and tapped on Mrs G's shoulder who was lying in a sort of child pose on the floor. Her shoulders were heaving.

For the uninitiated among you, i.e. those who haven't experienced being responsible for under ten year olds in a classroom situation, let me tell you that all of the above happened in less that 2 minutes. Speed and agility are of utmost importance when it comes to keeping order. Trust me.

"Mrs G, what happened? Are you okay?"

The face Mrs G raised to me from her position on the floor was red and streaked with tears.

"Where does it hurt...should I send for the nurse?"

Mrs G held out her hand (her sobs had morphed into intermittent hiccups by now) to be helped up on her feet.

"Mrs G is on the floor." announced Conor with glee.

The entire class bolted to the table. Mayhem.

There's nothing like noisy children to reboot a teacher/teaching assistant's batteries into action. When you've taught children this young, you know how quickly they pick on your energies. 

Stoic and calm, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened a couple of minutes ago, Mrs. G rose to her role, calling out children by their names and instructing them to pick up the drying dragons they'd painted earlier, from the table she'd been sitting at and tumbled off from while checking their reading records.

The bell rang. The children left. We were alone in the room: Mrs. G and I.

"Are you okay? What happened?"

"Say that again..." again the same sobs, no wait... that's soft chuckling...not sobs.

I was lost and confused.

"What did I say?"

Mrs G walked across the carpet area and picked the book I was about to read to the children, came back to where I was standing, opened to a page and pointed to, "ventriloquist."

"Ventriloquist?" I asked.

And there she was again, chuckling her soft chuckles, her shoulders heaving. Blobs of red were creeping back on her neck and cheeks.

The penny dropped. 

"How do you say it?" I asked.

In between her heaves, she held my hand to assure me she didn't mean to be rude and said, 
[ven-tril-uh-kwist].

I spent the rest of that afternoon saying [ven-tril-uh-kwist] aloud  to myself. 

Even today, when I come across it, I do a quick rehearsal in my head before I utter this word.

When I'd  said ventriloquist that day, this is what Mrs. G had heard, wen-tri-lo-quist. I had stressed each syllable (Indian style) and picked LO instead of tri as my stress syllable. Try it once, I can assure you it doesn't sound like any ventriloquist you know. We'll cover the v/w confusion in a bit.

I learnt English as a second language. All my spoken English came from school and from reading books. I have always loved words and I never hesitate to use new ones. When using a dictionary, I wasn't shown how to read the pronunciation of the words, so I only gleaned the meaning and usage and kept adding new words to my vocabulary.

All was well till I ended up teaching in a primary school in London. 

I came across West London English and my students met English's Indian cousin.

The great thing about children is that they are honest and forgiving. My students would correct me and with their help I learnt how to modulate my speech to not sound 'funny' when I didn't want to sound funny.  

But, it wasn't till my own two children started correcting my V or lack of it, that I became aware of the fact that despite Hindi alphabet's ability to have a letter for almost all 44 phonemes, my V sounded like W to others (not to me). Even today, scenes like this happen at home.

"Have you packed your vests?"

"Yes, mom...wests and souths and a few norths, too."

A CELTA trainer in Doha told me, "Never be ashamed of how you speak. Find out the standard pronunciation of a word, if you're not sure. And tell your students both the versions--standard and colloquial."

"I'm a Geordie." she said and smiled. " If I talk to you the way I speak at home, you'll be lost."

I ended up teaching English to adults in Doha. 

V is to Hindi speakers what P is to speakers of Arabic. There is no P sound in Arabic, so B is used instead.

"PAPA  John's Pizza." I stress the P with a piece of paper placed a few centimeters away from my mouth. "See, how the paper moves when I say P, now say B--it doesn't move."

"Let's try again Abdullah...P...P, expel that air through your lips."

"Wery well teacher." mimics Abdullah and I have no choice but to laugh out loud and remind myself to bite my lower lip slightly with my teeth next time I want to sound out the very troublesome V.

*****

I love the English language. It's let me live so many lives over these years: from Famous Five to Winnie the Pooh and then a bit of Mowgli, too. I better stop or we'll be here for a very long time.

I love the different accents even more. The richness these bring to a language so widely spoken should not be contained in the clipped sound of received pronunciation.

In India, the way you speak English is often used as a measure of your intelligence. I know. Sad and shocking. 

Have you ever faced a miscommunication or misinterpretation because of your accent or pronunciation?

A 2 minute video to wind up the post today.

Wishing you all a wonderful day:)

Will see you tomorrow.

Disclaimer: The classroom shenanigans are a mixture of many memories. All names have been changed. The bit about Mrs. G falling off her chair because she put her head back a bit too much to laugh out and hence tipped the balance of the tiny chair is totally true.

K is for Krishna

Re-posting this one to celebrate Krishna's birthday today.

Happy Janmashthami!

Butter thief or makhan chor was how Krishna was introduced to me. I was little. Stories were my classroom. My mother and grandmother were the storytellers.

Who's Krishna?

Our God. Or rather, my mother's favourite God. My mother's family (her parents) called Krishna their Ishta Devata or their favourite deity.

It may sound strange to you -- this business of favourite deity and choosing a God to worship. In fact, I've been asked this question many times by friends, acquaintances, colleagues and students- Why do Hindus have so many Gods?

When my eleven year old students in London asked me this question during a RE (Religious Education) lesson, I read up and researched a bit to find out a way to explain to them. I used an explanation I found online to make my point one rainy afternoon in October of 2005.

'Do you wear the same clothes to go swimming as you do when it's snowing outside?'

No, Mrs Jain. (in unison)

When you look at your holiday photos, or birthday photos or school photos, do you notice you look different in different clothes?

Yes, Mrs Jain.  (in unison)

Do you become a  different person every time you change an outfit?

No, Mrs Jain.  (in unison)

Here's Kelly's photo when she went to Spain last summer, and this one was last week at her nana's 90th and today Kelly is in school uniform. Is that 3 Kellies, then?

The shuffling shoes and loss of eye contact meant I had less than 7 seconds to wrap up and make my point, and I did.

Our different Gods may look different, they may have different qualities, but they are all representing the One God. Just like you look different in different clothes but you are still the same person. As a Hindu, I can choose which God I like and make him/ her my companion and friend and guide. Isn't that the point of Faith? To find a way to make the best versions of ourselves with a little help from a friend?

Looking back, I sound like such a boring teacher! Poor poppets.

I digress.

As children, we would listen to our grandmother tell us tales of Krishna stealing butter and getting caught, lying to his mother and getting punished for it, being naughty and teasing his friends. He seemed so accessible.

His antics change as he grows into a young man. In his youth, he is a model lover. His girl friends (gopiyan) adore him. He adores Radha and teases her all the time. He plays the flute and herds cows. And you thought that Bollywood heroes are a modern invention?

This image was sent to me by my friend Mimi who took a photo of a wall mural in a restaurant. 

I love it.

Murali Manohar or flute charmer is another name by which we call him.

He will kill demons and destroy corrupt Kings. He will recite the Bhagwad Gita. His words and their meaning will be sung and recited in Hindu homes all over India and abroad by aging grandparents. Sometimes, these words will enter the souls of the young and take root. Most times, they'll become another hymn to be recited as a ritual, without any thought given to their meaning or relevance.

Krishna has been many things to me in my lifetime.

Lying on a charpoy in our veranda under the twinkling shadow of sapta rishi (Ursa Major), my mother's chiffon dupatta (scarf) would flutter over my eyes in the evening breeze. I remember covering my eyes with it, while listening to her Krishna stories, imagining him stealing all that butter, some smeared on his mouth while he protested his innocence. Only the yellow light of the lamp was visible from our veranda. Rainbows appeared around the yellow light when I saw it through the dupatta. Playing hide and seek with the rainbows, I'd beg my mother to tell us another Krishna story, the one about his evil uncle, or the one when he stole all his friends' clothes when they went  swimming, or the one when he showed the entire universe to his mother...or....or...the requests were many, the time was limited.

I met Mark, an ISKCON devotee in Budapest yesterday. He told me about organic farming and I said I'd like to volunteer once my son goes to university. This chance meeting with Mark gave me my K. I was pondering over Kabir, Kolkata, Kareri while flying back to Doha, when Krishna presented himself. I was saved.

It's impossible to write about Krishna in a single post and that too when I'm typing with eyes half shut --I'm shattered. It's late and I've had a long day.

I'll leave you with a quote from Bhagvad Gita. It's easy to understand but very difficult to imbibe. I try and fail almost every day. But, I try gain. It's the reward bit I get stuck on. I'm working on it.

You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction. 

For more information about ISKCON:

http://www.iskcon.org/

E is for ESL (English as a second language)

Shekhawati, Rajasthan, 2014

A six year old is bossing her friends and siblings to sit cross-legged on a chatai (mat) in a cool corner of her grandfather's garden. To the left of this corner is the old shed with its greyish greenish tin roof and to its right--the voluptuous grape vine, hanging heavy with dark green bunches of young grapes. The six year old is behaving just like her grade teacher does with one hand on her hip and the other moving across a blackboard that exists only in the collective imagination of the pretend teacher and her not so willing pretend students. The six year old knows she will  be a teacher when she grows up.

That she'll end up as an ESL teacher, teaching adults in the Arabian Gulf, wouldn't have occurred to her in a million years.

Well, she did. Yes, it's me:) I wasn't a pleasant didi (older sister) at all--if memory serves me right.

Four plus years of teaching the language I love to students who've shown me the warmth, humour, charm and kindness of Qataris has fortified my belief that humans from different backgrounds, cultures, countries, religions, race and gender are all the same. We all have the same needs: to be loved, to be appreciated, to be understood and to live peacefully.

I may have taught them what an adjective is and that in English we put it before the noun, unlike Arabic, where it follows the noun (so old airport becomes Matar Qadeem - airport old) but they opened my heart to a culture I'd only heard of (second or third hand) from friends and visitors.

Unless we talk and exchange ideas, our understanding of another culture is based on our preconceived notions, media images and the news. I've been pleasantly surprised by my students- men dressed in pristine white thobs and women clad in black abayas.

My female students showed me how independent they are. Many choose to stay single and wait for the right life partner instead of settling for the sake of it. Divorce is not taboo. Married women rule at home, just like they do in India and in England. Married men complain about how much their wives spend on shopping, just like the rest of the married men in the rest of the world. Single men have to save money to be able to find a bride (not like in some families in India, where the parents of a baby girl start mustering together dowry from the day she's born). Single girls sometimes spend an entire month's salary on ONE handbag and then wait for the next pay day!

The topic was food. The students were learning new food vocabulary-- we were looking at 'dairy'. A student put his hand up and asked,

'Cheesus, teacher...What food cheesus? Say cheesus...cheesus...in Hollywood film...many, many times.'

'Cheesus?'I asked, puzzled and perplexed.

Moments of pondering and wondering later, it dawned, 'Do you mean Jesus?'

Lessons are peppered with funny moments like this one. Humour comes easily to the Qataris.

A friend of mine was teaching an intro level class; these students know only the alphabet and just a few words of English.

"It's odd, he keeps saying moustache in class. Apart from 'my name is...', and 'good morning', that's the only word he says." shared my friend in the staff room one day.

Both of us did a quick upper lip check for each other to be sure. No, nothing there.

Almost a month later, she found out that one of her stronger students had taught this gentleman that the English word for an 'eraser' is 'moustache'.

I quit my job this year to focus on my writing. I miss the energy and warmth of my students. I miss how some of them would tell me proudly that they were now able to help their children with their English homework or order their meal in a restaurant and not use any Arabic. I miss the pride in their eyes when they scored an 'Excellent' grade. I miss how a thirty-three year old police officer would show the smiley face I'd drawn on his writing practice to his classmate sitting next to him and how his twenty year old coast guard partner would then ask me for one, too. I miss that.  ESL games brought out the innocent child in these men of rank. They fought, tripped each other, cheated, laughed, made fun of the losing team and talked about their win in extremely loud voices over cups of karak at break-time. Lieutenants and Warrant Officers became like any other learners and students I've come across in my teaching career -- willing to give it their best shot.

 I miss the hugs my female students gave me. I miss the teasing, the sharing and the learning.

But most of all, I miss my unlearning -- unlearning the notions I'd grown up with about men in thobs and women in abayas.

Thank you ESL for this unlearning. One day, Inshallah! I may go back to teach and unlearn some more.

My last batch of students -- on a field trip.

I'm wearing an abaya and my students are all in thobs.

A birthday surprise organized by a class of ladies:
the letters on the right are their initials.