Kannada Gothilla

Something I posted on the ILP blog-



Going in with the enthusiasm of a new-comer to volunteer at the Community Library, the importance of a common language as a starting point didn’t strike me. My last session at the library started off ordinarily enough with two little girls coming and sitting next to me for a story-reading session. Both in 8th standard-but like most of the children there, very small for their age- M was quite the outgoing one and read the story in stumbling phrases but with reasonably good pronunciation. S on the other hand with her retreating smile, shied away every time I asked her something-including her name!-with a “Miss English goththilla”. Helplessly I would say “Kannada goththila”, my usual ticket to eliciting at least an attempt at English, but to no avail.
However, one thing I really love about the library is how a story or an activity can spark the interest of the most recalcitrant child. Soon, S was vying with her friend to read and there was a general battle….but the thing is that even though she read the story, most of the words were empty expressions followed by colourful pictures to her. Also, even after reading almost three stories, she wouldn’t speak in English to me.
There are some words you can explain with gestures and picture but even so there would be a constant poking in M’s ribs after I explained something, and S would ask in muttered Kannada what so and so was. Without even the advantage of basic Tamil, you feel helpless sometimes because the kids DO want to learn, they want to do rhyming words (Sometimes with disastrous results-“Why can’t hill rhyme with smell, they have the same ending letter?”!), they want to be given dictation and they really want to be part of everything.
The same happens even to people who can in some way communicate with a close-enough language- Rosh who speaks Tamil was wracking her brains trying to think how you explain why the past tense of “go” becomes “went” and why “he comes” is the present of “he came”.
The system is doing and awfully shoddy job is the children in Public Schools are taught to read but not to understand what they’re reading out, because in that case the whole joy of learning a language is lost. Idealistic joys of language aside, it is of minimum practical use as well.
On a happier note, thanks to this little handicap I’ve started picking up little bits of Kannada, although I have to say that when I explain a tree to be a “mara”, and then say a wood is “place with a lot of maras”, I can’t help but join them in the giggling!

Ye Holy Date

Trust my dad to know any Priest within a 5oo mile radius of himself. He told me during a Skype session recently that he'd got in touch a with a priest from Banaglore who was doing some time (ha ha!) in Colombo but would be returning soon.
Obviously the "daughter in India" was spoken about, the number was given etc. And of course I was told to "call him no putha when you have time".

I have to say the reason I called the priest (henceforth knows as Father) as fast as I did was because my good dad had told me he headed a Senior Citizens Home and I needed to get some elders to fill in a couple of questionnaires for a Psycho project.

Anyway, Father sounds very sweet on the phone and all that and we set up our "holy date"-I'll go to his church and from there he'll take me to an Elder's Home he knows(he does not head one, MY father as usual got his well-meaning wires crossed!)

After an amusing Auto ride during which I got semi-lost (I don't/can't do directions/roads)and spoke to my non-Hindi speaking Auto guy in broken Hindi, I reached.

I have a little game I play as I wait to meet someone for the first time. Based on what I know, what they sound like etc I build up a mental image...so that I can see how wonderfully off the mark I almost always am!

And boy oh boy! Father was not late 30's, stocky, close-cut haired or adult-acned!
Here is this tall,highly presentable, earl-30's guy in civvies!
So, Father says we can take off for the Home now...hang on he'll go get the bike.

BIKE?!

Holy Cow!Because,

a. I have never ridden a freaking bike before. and
b. Ride on the back of the bike with a Priest?!!
c. in Civvies?!

Father is now aviatore-d and helemt-ed and on the freaking bike. Oh get on he says, in a kindly pastor way. I explain that I have never done that before but it doesn't seem to bother him overmuch...so I eye the seat behind him and think that may be I should sit side-saddle, this might be more demure right? It's a PRIEST for God's sake!
Then father very helpfully says no I think you should sit astride...OKAY THEN!
i swing my leg over the seat and settle by bottom behind the clergyman's....And oh god I was sure I was going to fall off, and if I do what do I hold on to? I can't exactly wrap my arms around Father's trim waist!

I grope around behind me and find some wire-rack thing to hang onto finally and WHOOSH! we're off! And the mortification,the sheer, unadulterated mortification, the momentum of the take-off makes me semi-grasp Father's shoulder!
I heave a deep, internal sigh.

Poor Father suggests that i can hang on to the wire rack. i die.

So Father and I on our mo-bike speed away across the crowded streets of Bagalore to the Home...I spend the first few minutes cringing...My God what if someone sees?! but Father is a real sweetheart and gets me talking about school and family and all that and soon I'm enjoying my very first bike ride...with none other than the freaking clergy!!

Beat that :D

The Mad guy and the Bournvita

There's apparently a mad guy-the politically correct terms I think would be deranged individual or mentally unstable individual- roaming around "Loafer's Lane", the quintessential road opposite college where everyone basically...loafs.

When K was telling us about it today she added that he slapped our friend S in the face yesterday, in front of the college gates. The concept of unholy mirth overtook me and I snorted only to realize that shit! This wasn't supposed to be funny!
But all throughout the harrowing story, my mouth was twitching....even during the part where she told us S started crying, poor thing. No really, poor thing....S is an extremely sweet person, she comes up to me everyday and gives me a BIG bear hug, and she's all of 4 feet :)

I often have these times when something very serious is being said, and I can't stop laughing...needless to say, no one shares in my humour. It's a bit uncomfortable actually!

Now,I'm torn between going down Loafer's and buying that essential bottle of Bournevita OR taking a bath, blaming it on the mad man and just staying in.

The choices of life I tell you.

Proscribed art form,much?!

I paid a visit to my favourite place in Bangalore today : B Book Shop-home of the old and yellowed-page version of every possible book in history (except Catcher in the Rye which is always mysteriously “Out of stock, madame”).
Once immersed there it usually takes something a bit more urgent than a nuclear power-plant-explosion to remove me from said immersed state BUT today I went with a purpose.
My bratty younger sister (Who’s actually an OK kid J ) is another one of those 14-year olds who would leave their homes for Edward Cullen (Ok so I wouldn’t leave my HOME for him as such, maybe take the last year off college or something), and has been hankering after the 4 books in the quadralogy…which is not a word!!! But I still like it!!
Since books which are usually very affordable in India are usually even more affordable at this joint of mine, swipe-card ready I went.
However, spotting “Midnight’s Children” but Salman Rushdie reminded me that my Tranquil Roomie had asked me to pick up Satanic Verses by Rushdie if/when I went next to Blossom.
This being because when she requested it at some other bookstore, the man at the store had given the fish eye and told her in no uncertain terms that the book was unavailable, permanently
Now the book was banned in India following a HUGE controversy in 1989, and this was even before Khomeini in Iran and his fatwa against Rushdie, which since then has been removed, I think. I had thought by now the furore would have died down.

I went to the cashier and asked him if the book was there, although I have to admit I was a bit disoriented at first because he had the most fantastic squint and I thought he wasn’t giving me his undivided attention as such, poor man.

On hearing my words, he nods and does and 180 degrees, shuffles through some random papers and files in the messy steel rack behind the counter and presents with me with what looks like a sheaf of loosely-bound papers.

Looking closer, the book is cover-less, obviously to avoid detection and the pages have just been bound together. The last page is coming off. It really has the look of the proscribed book.

I say ahhh you don’t have it with a cover do you? He looks at me and the shelf behind me simultaneously and gives a sheepish smile, nope.
So I decide to give TR a call and we decide that she will pay a visit to the place herself to see if it’s worth paying Rs.500 for it.

When I go back to the cashier and tell him I don’t want it, HE gives me the fish eye. The kind of look a closet junkie would give a plain-clothes cop I guess followed by placing the book in its unobtrusive spot again.

Now that was interesting. You’d think the ban was lifted by now, Rushdie’s other book are bestsellers hereabouts.

Very, very interesting.
.

Just Because...

Gmail is taking so very long to upload my much-thought-over Selections for the photo comp at College, I now post one of my personal favourites-which I had to leave out of the said comp because it didn't really rhyme with the theme of "Life in College".

Ok may be 2 of my personal favourites :)

Walking the talk

SINCE I've been hankering to do some volunteering work for the past say one year-read hankering as talking about it and not doing anything about it at all-I was glad when an alumnus of our College working for the India Literacy Project in Bangalore barged into Socio class(yeah we were thrilled, especially since the current class was on cultural diversity in India or some other riveting topic) and told us that they were on the look-out for volunteers.

Woo-hoo, was all I could think.

So, two weeks back on Saturday my fellow college-is-so-blah companion Rosh and I went to this supposed library-she had been there before so I had the advantage of rave reviews.



It touched me. And it inspired my world-weary (yeah I love my drama!!) soul to write. Here's something I posted on the ILP Blog.Have a look-see if you feel like it :)



http://ilpindia.blogspot.com/