Working under feudal language speakers

As I have mentioned earlier, I had a very great repulsion for working under other ‘Indians’. First of all there is the issue of why ‘Indian’s want to be entrepreneurs. What spurs this spirit is not a genuine inner volition for entrepreneurship. Instead, what goads one to become a business owner are two different emotions. One is the terribleness of working under Indians. In fact, it is not connected to ‘Indian’ bosses, but to all bosses who speak in feudal languages. The subordinate is made to bear a huge burden of pejorative word codes. It is a very diabolic effect. Working for an Indian who speaks in the ‘Indian’ vernaculars is literally mental and physical slavery. Here work is not salvation, but denigration. However, it depends on a particular person’s native situation. If he or she is bored and alone in the household, then just to move out can give a feel of liberation. However, for a person of higher social value, it can simply be a shift from the boiling kettle right into the fire.

The second emotion that spurs one to become a business owner is the keen interest in dominating over others. In feudal languages, dominating others come with the satanic powers of using the pejoratives on them without any qualms.

Working under a feudal language speaking individual is slavery with non-tangible iron shackles. Being a slave under a native-English speaker is mental and physical elevation for a person who has lived in a feudal language social system. But it is not equal to being the native-English slave owner.

There are a lot of frill elements connected to working under ‘feudal language speakers’. I remember the story by Somerset Maugham: The Pool:  See this quote:

He had the peculiarity that as he grew drunk he grew quarrelsome and once he had a violent dispute with Bain, his employer. Bain dismissed him, and he had to look out for another job. He was idle for two or three weeks and during these, sooner than sit in the bungalow, he lounged about in the hotel or at the English Club, and drank. It was more out of pity than anything else that Miller, the German-American, took him into his office; but he was a business man, and though Lawson’s financial skill made him valuable, the circumstances were such that he could hardly refuse a smaller salary than he had had before, and Miller did not hesitate to offer it to him. Ethel and Brevald blamed him for taking it, since Pedersen, the half-caste, offered him more. But he resented bitterly the thought of being under the orders of a half-caste. When Ethel nagged him, he burst out furiously:

‘I’ll see myself dead before I work for a nig*er’.

‘You may have to’, she said.

And in six months, he found himself forced to this final humiliation. The passion for liquor had been gaining on him, he was often heavy with drink, and he did his work badly. Miller warned him once or twice and Lawson was not the man to accept remonstrance easily. One day in the midst of an altercation, he put on his hat and walked out. But by now his reputation was well-known and he could find no one to engage him. For a while, he idled, and then he had an attack of delirium tremens. When he recovered, shameful and weak, he could no longer resist the constant pressure and he went to Pedersen and asked him for a job. Pedersen was glad to have a white man in his store and Lawson’s skill at figures made him useful.

From that time, his degeneration was rapid. The white people gave him the cold shoulder. They were only prevented from cutting him completely by disdainful pity and by a certain dread of his angry violence when he was drunk. He became extremely susceptible and was always on the lookout for affront.

He lived entirely among the natives and half-castes, but he had no longer the prestige of the white man. They felt his loathing for them and they resented his attitude of superiority. He was one of themselves now and they did not see why he should put on airs.

MY COMMENT: This story has a lot of deep insights in it that connects to the social layers of a feudal language society. However, when the story is read, it simply seems to be a problem of White Englishmen showing disdain for the Asian/South Pacific people. That is not the exact truth. For, there are other truths of satanic proportions, hidden deep within the shrouded interiors of feudal languages.

A remarkable social experiment

I did suffer this issue when I moved in close proximity with the lower classes of any particular social setting. It is not connected to class per se, but to a particular social scenery. I remember once being forced to live many years ago with the workers of a business unit owned by my own family, in a distant town. I was keeping away from my own family and house. In that particular setting the youthful workers were just the workers and I was a family member of the owner household.

Yet, my current residential companions were the workers, quite un-educated and totally un-informed from an English perspective. My own companions from a distant city once came to see me in that setting, in which I was quite on easy terms with the workers. The workers addressed me with the statutory ‘respect’ of ‘Chettan’ prefixed to my name. However my innate native position of trying to disseminate an English egalitarianism played spoilsport. For, I had no qualms of asking them to erase all poses of ‘respectful’ actions towards me. When some of them tried to hide their cigarettes in my presence, I insisted that they can sit in front of me and smoke with perfect composure. Actually all these things were like social experiments. The error that I was making was that what I was proposing was English postures in a social environment in which there was no English. None of them had even seen an English movie or read even an English newspaper. Naturally the way they understood my stances can be in terms quite distant from my own intellectual stances.

There was one time when one senior-in-age person came to see me. I was sitting near the phone table. He sat near me. We were talking. Suddenly one of the young workers came inside, sat down and started phoning. He was smoking a cigarette. The issue here was this worker was coming and sitting in front of a senior person, both in age as well as position, and smoking. All this would perfectly go against the feudal language word codes. The visitor looked perfectly shaken. He asked with quaint surprise, ‘What is this?’ I couldn’t understand the problem. For, none of the social issue really penetrated into my head.

‘Who is this boy? Isn’t he a worker here?’ the other man asked.

I replied in the affirmative. ‘What is he doing?’ the other man insisted.

I must have looked quite perplexed, for he went forward to say it in words. ‘He is a worker and you are from the owner’s side. How can he sit and smoke in front of you?’ My egalitarianism was frankly unnerving him. For, he was quite distressed to be in close proximity with a worker, wherein social distance (not physical distance) codes were not functional.

Even with this admonishment, the utter rascality of the scene did not touch me. I simply replied, ‘It doesn’t matter’. However, other man looked quite distressed. Maybe I was too preoccupied with the frill elements of the business talk I was having with him. For, I was living on my own, and I had no time to shift my mental focus on themes that wouldn’t have any bearing on my immediate earnings.

However looking back, these minor things do have huge input on a person’s earning capacity in society. People from the higher social status simply keep away from such persons, who do move too close with the lower classes to the level of allowing them social equality. It is powerfully required as per the feudal indicant word codes.

When my old companions from a far-off city came to visit me, they immediately understood the social codes in play there. They said that they wanted to buy some liquor and that they would come after two hours. Yet, they never came. They simply moved off to another location some three kilometres away. These old companions were connected to my college education. However none of them were good in English, but were all powerfully connected to government official households. Some of them were really deeply indebted to me for their various career successes. Yet, they could smell the stink of being with the lower crowd of ‘India’. They couldn’t bear it. Well, these are the real truths about a feudal language nation. There is no contention that they were bad and that the workers with me were better. In fact, both of them were of the same kind, when the codes of the language work in them. Everyman speaks in stinking terms of persons he or she perceives to be from the lower class, in indicant word code which cannot be imagined by a native-English speaker even in his wildest dream or evilest nightmare.   

As I struggle to earn a livelihood through private businesses, away from the cosy security of my own household, the workers who stayed in the same premises would have their own evaluation about me. Even though I promoted an egalitarian social code, this very code made me different from almost everyone around. This in a way was to robe me in a superiority aura, which could easily be defined as false, pseudo and quite weak, due to the total social insecurity of my living standards. The question that would slowly brood in the minds of the workers could very easily come near to the words in the quoted text above: ‘They felt his loathing for them and they resented his attitude of superiority. He was one of themselves now and they did not see why he should put on airs.’

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