One of my major weaknesses was my inability or reluctance to use lower indicant words to others, including youngsters, professional juniors, lower level workers, menial servants and also to my own staff members. The first impression anyone with a casual idea about me would be that I was quite a sissy and perfectly incapable of any kind of management. This reluctance of mine was quite deeply connected to the fact that I disliked degrading anyone using pejorative words and information.
There was another quirkiness in me. I used to use higher indicant words to and about persons who were socially seen as lower. In a way these were experiments of mine to see what would happen when socially acceptable indicant words were exchanged with unexpected indicant words. The way persons reacted and behaved in this strange setting was to give me real inputs towards my observations.
Whatever happened in my life, I strode to use as a specimen for investigation on the power of words, the codes in the language, the links to the inner virtual world, mental and physical connections between persons, between events, and also between persons and events as linked through the virtual world.
An outlandish experiment
One of the greatest experiments that I did was with my own children. This experiment was done by bringing them up in total English, living among vernacular speaking people. It was my contention that this could bring in many positive changes in them. Not only be teaching them only English, but also by not allowing vernacular speaking persons to speak to them in vernacular.
What I did experience was not just connected to my own children, but to a lot of other social triggers, as I stood on a different frequency with that of the others around. In my life, I have seen that if one flows along with the tide or the flow, one chances to see only things that all others also see. But if one strives to hold on against this tide and flow, then what one comes to see is not only what others happen to see and experience, but also others things which others cannot get to experience. For, they flow with the tide, while the odd one gets to see others things also, as they come to hit or come from the rear. The perspective is different. The items are different. The experience is different.
The dawn of my understanding
Right from my early childhood, I did feel that there was something wrong with the communication system of the local vernacular. It was distressing to me, and I found it quite disturbing. However, it was only when I first came to hear English spoken that I suspected that there were other ways of human communication other than Malayalam. My sisters used to come home from an English school, where in those days, a slight tinge of British systems were there. They would speak to each in English, which I couldnt understand. But the difference between English and Malayalam was quite obvious. It was a different sounding language. When it was being spoken, I could sense a difference in the general behaviour of my sisters, as they interacted with each other.
Later, as I myself came to understand and speak English, I could discern a grave difference in the mood and attitude of persons who spoke to me in English with those who spoke to me in Malayalam. The English speakers could only communicate with me as an equal, while Malayalam speakers could only speak to me as a subordinate, idiotic personality. As a child, the two different ways of treating me was quite distinctly clear. For a long time, I could not really understand why this was so.
The English speakers could only ask intelligent questions and that too, to the point. While the Malayalam speakers used to ask question to which the answers were quite obvious. However, it was clear to me that they wanted to see the spectacle of me answering to them in the difficult contortions of the feudal language, wherein I as a subordinate was forced and pestered to answer silly questions. Later, much later, I was to know that this was the way the Malayalam speaking police officials used to taunt the common man, if they came to the police station for anything.
Questions in Malayalam would be asked to me, the child, in a pose of questioning a silly, dumb-headed child. Such questionings were not required, as the answers were known to others including the question-asking person. Questions such as Who is your father? What is your mothers name? etc. were pestered out of me, and the others used to see this as a sort of an act of buffoonery by me. They would burst out in laughter.
However, generally when the speakers were talking to me in English, there would be a mood of questions to the point, or communication at a different level.
A wobbly world
Even though I did not notice it then, the fact was that I was being questioned with a Nee and the reference to me was Avan. I did not then know the fact that there were different levels of questioning and referring to, such as Ningal, Thangal, Sar, Ayaal, Avar, Adheham etc. each one of the words creating a different social mood.
When I later came to understand this fact, it was only a simple extending of this knowledge to know that when persons are kept in the lower indicant word level, they can really be pestered, tormented and made to look silly and unintelligent.
Parentage
Of my parents, one was a medical practitioner with a non-allopathic qualification. He was earlier in the Malabar District Board, a continuation of the statutory British medical system in the Malabar district. He later in life went in for private business. My mother was a government officer. She was part of the Madras state government personnel. Later during the state reorganisation, she opted for Kerala State Service. Both my parents were different from the ordinary, and their lifestyles, emotional triggers, mutual animosities, and many other things were to give me a lot of insights about the dangerous triggers inside the local language.
There are a few things that I can jot down about my parents, which can be connected to language codes. My mother was a government officer who in present day India can collect a lot of bribes. However in those days, there were no such thoughts. I was conscious of a feeling inside her that the people had a claim over her work and punctuality. Looking back, it is amazing that government officers could work without any thoughts of getting any extra money. The pay was pretty low, by present day standards. It was not much higher than many other paid work in the other fields. But then, there off course was the security of getting an assured income at the end of the month.
I later came to see that this honesty in public service was not her individual attribute, but something that was common with all the Indian officials who had come through the British-Indian administration.
A backward directed amalgamation
Kerala had been formed by joining the Malabar district of Madras state with Travancore-Cochin state at the southern end of India, in the year 1956. Travancore and Cochin had been independent kingdoms during the British rule, till 1947. Malabar was under the Madras state which was one of the three presidencies of British India. So, even though every year the people of Travancore and Cochin do celebrate the Independence Day of India on the 15th of August, the fact remains that they were not part of the British Empire, in the strict sense of the word. For, they had their own kings, who ruled them with a lot of restriction and controls, most of them connected to their caste. In the British ruled parts, almost all such restrictions and controls were not in statutory force. What really happened in 1947 was that the two native kingdoms were made to join the Indian Union under duress. There is no truth in the claims that they had acquired independence from the British rule.
We moved to Travancore in the year 1970. In many ways it was a revelation on the difference between British administration and a typical Indian one. In Travancore, inefficiency was a part and parcel of government service. All people, other than acknowledged persons and other government employees, were treated like dirt. In Malabar, at least in the non-uniformed services, the ideology that all non-governmental persons were dirt was not there, even though, in the local society, the language did paint a large percentage of the population with dirt.
A strange haunting
Now I need to go back to the dawn of my childhood. That is to the age when I was around 2 years or so. At times, during my times of slumber, my mind would visualise a female figure looking at me from a sort of photo frame, in an expression of looking at a vanquished enemy or an ensnared animal, with a glee that was aimed at mental disturbance. Her eyes were of a frightening quality, as they glared and gloated with some satanic pleasure. I would wake up from my slumber with a start, sweating. These imageries did not happen quite often, and were more or less isolated incidence. I would get an inner feeling of connecting this figure with two of females that I did know. One was an aunt and the other was my own mother.
Over the years, the memory of this figure was more and more connected to my mother. Even though actually this was a very slight memory in my mind, and rare one at that, at this moment in time, I think that it would be quite good to record this. I hope to make my reasons clear later.
An addiction for leadership and its routes
One of my earlier impressions about my family life was of a socially very powerful mother, and a sort of non-entity father. My mother was always having some men with her to attend to her commands, while my father did not seem to have such a following. It was quite an erroneous impression that many others were also to have. Later in my life I came to understand that my mother was only having such persons as peons and clerks from her office to be on attendance to her at home. It was to give her a commanding personality, wherein she could be seen as some sort of a regal personality.
I came to understand in later life that she had a real craving for leadership as a sort of addiction. As I came to study her personality, the understanding came that she was quite clever in using the various indicant levels of words to create dissension in other leaderships, that were not in concurrence with that of hers.
For some reason, she could not bear to have any other competing leaders in her presence. She would quite easily destroy any such personality who could be a threat to her leadership, by simply elevating lower class persons to the levels of her competitors. In fact, she was quite successful in dismantling any leadership her husband could manage to build up. She used many techniques, most of them quite simple.
If her husband had any workers of his own, she would make them attend to her commands, and then she would feed them. By means of simple and even unremarkable words, she would convey stories, and information that would give the impression that her husband was a crook, a quack and a cranky person. Along with this, simple stories of her great achievement in government service would be doled out to the doting guys. In no time, her husband would be a non-entity to his own workers. They would wonder how such a nut could marry such a regal person.
However, I was later to discern that she was regal only among persons who knew her regal personality and to stark outsiders, she was just another cranky woman. I was to experience the power of proper introduction. The way indicant words change with and without proper introduction.
Another thing that I came to know of her was that she was an expert in Gandhian form of leadership. That of having a mob of uneducated guys always with her, who would lend powerful respect to her. She was not quite comfortable with persons who were at a higher intellectual or social capacity, in an absolute sense. However, when she needed to be with them, she would only appear there only in a preset social scenery wherein she was surrounded by a group of respectful followers. They would quite easily lend the information through the powerful Malayalam higher indicant words of respect that she was a highly placed person. Without this appendix, she was a nonentity.
However, it must be said that all social communication and leadership set up in India does work on this social set up, which leaders take pain to set up with meticulous planning.
The huge experiences
There are a lot of things that I would like to write about in terms of my life experiences that came to give me the insight of the inner codes. However, it may take some time to finish the work. I do not at present have the time to do it.
So let me be brief and just mention one or two items for the present.
Designs of my life
One of the major themes that really designed the direction of my life was the dilemma that I faced at a quite early age about what to do with my life. Due to the inner view of Indian bureaucracy at a very young age, and sensing the rapid lowering of quality that was taking place inside it, I was quite averse to joining the Indian bureaucracy. There is much to be said about incidences in this regard.
The second thing was the other option. That of working under other Indians. Well, that was seen as an abominable thing for me, as I found most them of very horrendous mentality, coupled with the using of snubbing feudal language codes to those who worked under them. If I were to come to be placed under such persons, I would fast become one such person, with the same level of hideous cunningness.
I opted for a third route. That of being self-employed, and to do business as a means of livelihood. This choice also led to me to very picturesque experiences that made me move to various corners of the nation. I was to learn a lot of businesses, inside out.
Now let me conclude by relating a very curious experiment that I did.
