Facets of the training

Our training programme was not the usual Spoken English teaching, but involved a lot of activities by which the trainees were converted into an English mental ambience. Much importance was placed on postures, and cessation of involuntary actions such as shaking of legs etc. Moreover there was no need to get up when the trainers arrived. Only a statutory Good Morning or Good Evening etc. A number of indoor board games such as Monopoly, Checkers, Chess, Dominos, Caroms, Scotland Yard, Cleudo, Scrabble and such were played. Both Varuna as well as Ashwina used to take part in these games and interaction programmes. Even though they both improved their mental stamina by being the trainers, there was another side to this activity which was painful. It was that they endeavoured hard to improve the total quality of the trainees. However since most of them were coming from the cruder sides of feudal Malayalam, with most them having their father working in low level jobs in the Middle East and basically coming from lowly educated families, their initial response to Varuna and Ashwina would be to taunt them.

I remember one day when Ashwina came inside the class room with a new bag which she showed to the trainees, one of the young men there simply made a very derogatory comment about the bag. Actually these types of verbal reactions are not there in standard English unless one has a spite towards the other person. Here it was not spite that worked, but rather the standard behaviour to youngsters or a weak junior, that the feudal Malayalam insists upon. Ashwina would have been only around five or six years old then.

There was another time when after a board game one young man taunted Ashwina with the words, ‘You lost! You lost!’ in a terribly disturbing expression. Ashwina simply told him that it is a training programme to improve his communication skills. That more or less placed the context powerfully. He did not know how to react next. So he got up and lifted Ashwina up in the air, so as to show that she was not a trainer, but just a little girl. He was immediately asked to vacate the place. However, he just lingered on, with excuses.

This person did not pay his fee which was actually a minor amount. I was told that his father did send the fees, but that when his Gulf Visa came, he spent it on a festivity to mark the event. He simply told me that his father would be giving the amount within days, and vanished from the training two days before he departed to the Gulf.

The fee was at first Rs. 1300/month. But soon it was reduced to 750 and then to 500/month. Even this small fee, many students wouldn’t pay. It was not that they did not have the money. For, they were all cash rich, with a parent in the Middle East. There was a concerted move to see that I stayed short of cash, among a section of the local rich people who naturally felt a competition with me and my moves. I do remember one young man coming and detailing the number of days he had not come for the class, and leaving without giving the due Rs. 500/-. However he paid a few hundred thousand for an engineering seat in Karnataka state.    

There was this tenant of ours. He came from a very backward area. However, when he was among us, his English improved and this was very much visible in his demeanour and his social mobility. Once this was established, then another enlightenment came upon him. His wife and he took up the issue of comparing their capacities with that of ours. It easily dawned on him that when the total value of land that he has in his home village is compared with our land ownership, he could be a more financially sound person. He would go on dropping names and other connections to show off his great social connectivity. As for me, I had the habit refraining from dropping names, unless I am in an ambience where I feel threatened. Well, the only way to make him come back to realities would be to send him back to his village. For, then the platform that he had in an English ambience would be missing. Then if he goes on evaluating this financial acumen, it has no meaning. For he stands in a deep pit, and the view to the pit is quite abominable. In spite of all his financial capacities.

This piece of information I have added to make the great number of immigrant populations in English nations come back to realities. All their claims of super intelligence and other capacities go back to nil or negative, the moment they are forced back to their native lands. Their supernatural capacities are all there on the secure platform of an English nation’s magnanimity and also gullibility.  

There was this experience of mine. I was at that time running a manufacturing unit. A local man appeared in the scene as a handyman. He was around 15 years elder to me. He would come and go. He used to go and sit in the nearby houses and spent his time in local issue discussions with persons of his age. He used to address me as Saar (forYou, He, Him etc. highest level). This was actually a very powerful positioning of me when he sat among the others in the neighbouring houses. As a researcher in language codes and also because I hated the word Saar as a superimposition done to deal with the other incongruities of the local language, I categorically told him that he can use the common word for polite interaction Ningal to me. It was a means to promote his stature vis-a-vis me. Yet, the moment this was announced, his side went up. For he and his fellow persons were elder to me. So naturally, when speaking about me, he would not use the word Saar as the word for He and Him. Others in his companionship would immediately sense that for some reason, his evaluation of me has come down.

I did not see the real effect of this code change for quite some time. However, one day, the woman of the neighbouring house came to our premises, when other workers were also there. She used the word ‘Mone’ to me. This word would mean Son, Child etc. At that time I must be around 35 years old and running a manufacturing unit. In all means, it was a degrading word, that though said in the guise of affection was only an insult.

When speaking about this form of insult and snubbing, I have seen it done by low grade government officials to young men. When young men come for demanding any service, they snub them in a pose of affection by addressing them with a Mone (son/child) or Mole (daughter/child). There can be no effective complaint against this. For, it can be designated as an affectionate stance. However, the trap is in the extension. For, immediately the other indicant words crash down. He and Him would go down to Avan and Aval [FEMALE]. And addressing would be Nee.

Coming back to my predicament with the woman who came to the manufacturing unit, I have to put it in words that it is quite dangerous to act magnanimously to others, especially with low-placed persons in a feudal language social system. Magnanimity is okay, provided adequate layers of safeguards and security persons are there in position. 

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