Native-English persons who live in England do not understand all these things. I remember meeting one Malayalam man who had lived in the Tamilnadu district of Madurai with his wife. He said speaking Tamil without knowing the various inner codes is very dangerous. He mentioned that there had been occasions when he and his wife were on the verge of being beaten up. The issue was the presence of ‘respect’ and pejorative codes even in verbs. When addressing or referring to persons who are seen as social seniors, they inadvertently missed some ‘respect’ code in verbs. For example, when saying ‘Please, sit here’, the word ‘sit’ can have different forms depending on whom it is aimed at. A minor sound of ‘respect’, if missed can be like shaking the huge social structure. For that endeavour the other side could very well shake up a person’s skeletal structure. The essential factor here was that this couple were indentified as lower stature persons. A lower stature person using lower indicant words about higher class persons can summon violence.

The terror of the lower man

Speaking about India, the true fact is that everyone is in terror of a lower man improving. People snub every person, right from childhood, who they perceive to be from the lower class. The word ‘snubbing’ is not the correct word to use. For, it is not snubbing that is done, but the use of very powerful negative value indicant words. It affects the looks and facial expressions. However, within each layer, there are mutual suppressions. So much so that even among the lower sections, one can find persons existing in the layer of gold within that layer. It is a very complicated scenario. I do not want to go into the inner codes and links here, for I fear that my writings would get elongated much. I do want to finish this book. I started with the idea to finish the theme with five thousands words. As of now, word count is touching 222,000 words. I need to use brevity. For, conciseness, I have been advised, is the soul of braininess.

I think that I have dealt with the theme of Indian looks. The persons on the golden layers of the indicant word codes look like gold, and those on the lower edge of the indicant codes look like dirt. However, there is much to be mentioned about the effect of these on the virtual codes. I have written about them and their effects on looks in my book: CODES of REALITY! WHAT is LANGUAGE?

Earth-quaking postures

It was my long enduring endeavour to disseminate English in its most pristine form, wherever I lived. Now, that only means that I did try to spread English without the feudal codes of the Indian vernaculars afflicting English. In my younger days, this used to create a lot of rancour towards me. Many persons took exception to the fact that I used to refer to others with a Mr. or Mrs. or Miss prefixed to their names, when they are seen as social or positional seniors. I do not remember any such person becoming distressed with my stance. However, the others who were using powerful suffixes of ‘respect’ when mentioning these persons, would get visibly annoyed. Their thoughts would be that I was acting out a superiority which was not condonable. It is true that they were all basically some level of employees to someone and that limited their freedom of articulation. However, since I was rarely an employee to anyone, I did not think that my verbal usages were truculent in any way.  

I have done an immensity of experiments and made observations on the effects and actions of word codes. They are not done a very pre-planned manner. Many of them are done on the spur of the moment. There would be no clear-cut idea as to how I would use the observations. In many cases, the observations that I make are more or less predictable beforehand.

Once I was with some of my workers. All of them of age around 20 or less. They had their innate lower-indicant-word facial expressions and ways and manners. We were standing in front of a business owner. I wanted him to do something and get me the information. He would be my age of that time. Around 30. I told him that he could give the information to ‘this man’ (one of the young workers): The word I used was evar (higher He, Him). The terrible look of deep consternation that the other businessman gave me was quite remarkable. I had just used the word Evar, instead of the statutory Avan which is the lower indicant word meant for a lower-aged servant. It was as if the whole communication structure would collapse. The other possibility was also there, there I had gone stark mad. The worker boys also looked at me in sharp surprise.

There was another time when I was living a life of terrible social insecurity. I used to visit a bachelors’ house, where some persons known to me were living. I must be aged around 27. The deep insecurity of my physical living standards was affecting my physical looks negatively. The servant woman’s son of around 18 would visit that place. All my associates (of age around 25+) would address him as Nee, and refer to him as Avan. He was thus powerfully placed in a lower indicant layer. However, from my profound stance of pro-English, I couldn’t come to address him as Nee and to refer to him as Avan. I used the word Ningal for You and Ayaal for He and Him (medium level indicant). The location was Malabar. If it had been in Travancore, my gesture would have possibly gone unnoticed. I could very easily see this young man becoming elevated in my presence and depreciated in the presence of others. He would be quite respectful to them and quite stubborn in the task of showing ‘respect’ to me. The effect on him totally was that he was not seeing me as a senior individual. His pose suggested slowly that he was seeing me as a lowly person. Well, this is also one effect of improving others in Malayalam. The guy literally climbs on one’s head. This effect was also aided by the sinister tone of talk about me by the others who naturally were unnerved by my solitary stance. It was as if one person was standing quite out of step. If I had been in sync with the others, the social layer would have given me the necessary security.

A tormenting training

There was a time around seven years back when two young boys came to me for studying English. Basically what prompts them for studying English is to get a better job in the Middle East. The larger ambition of bringing in social refinement is not there. One was an auto-rickshaw driver and the other was a taxi jeep driver’s son, who was also occasionally doing the same work. From the standard Indian contexts both were low-class jobs. However, it is just a matter of perspective. When one lives among people who desperately want to become a driver, they are the leader class.

The issue that I faced was that I could not change my stance of training English as an egalitarian language. They were told to address me with my name with a Mr. prefixed. It was basically an action of placing pearls before a swine. They could understand this gesture as an input that I was dirt cheap. One of these trainees was a quite a bit of tough thing for me to handle at first. For, I was powerfully tormented from my family side also at that time. Close persons inside my family were taking sides that were quite inimical to me. It was in the midst of all this issue that I was training these youngsters. I was physically weak. My body would go cold and I would become breathless at times. It should be borne in mind that I had been a person who used to drive a four-wheeler and a ride a two-wheeler all around the local state (totally around 1600 kms up and down, and crossways) continuously without any health problems.

When coming down through the narrow stairways of our training area, if that youngster was coming up, he wouldn’t move out. He would come up expecting me to stand aside for him. Even though he would prefix Mr. to my name in my presence when speaking to other trainees, in my absence he would simply mention my name. In Malayalam, a mere name is used for an equal or for a subordinate. I was at least 20 years + his senior in age, even though physically at that time he was quite big, I was in a very much depreciated looks. One of the issues that I had to face was that when these youngsters are with their own family members and associates, I would be mentioned without any suffixes of respect or with the standard ‘Mr.’ prefixed. In those areas, I could be very fast pulled down to a lower guy by a mere change of indicant word for He and Him. Thinking of these things, I really wonder what all pangs the Englishmen of the colonial times would have had to bear as they went around improving the nation, writing fantastic statutory Acts and rules and administrative systems and educating the ungrateful populations. {Even in my mother’s joint family household (lower caste), I have not heard one word of gratitude for the English education or the social elevation that the British rule provided for them. They speak only words of hate, parroting what is written in their textbooks, even though there is no personal issue of any Englishman having hurt them}.

This auto-rickshaw driver later became quite good in English. In fact, no one would be able to connect him to the guy who came to me. His vocabulary became vast, his pronunciations correct and his accent also quite good. He knew to play a number of indoor games including Monopoly, all in good English. He learnt computer tying and could soon become quite adept in using the Internet. However, even though he spent quite a lot of months in my training programme, he paid his fees only in the initial two or three months. The rest at first became promises. Much later, when I insisted on his fees, he simply sent an SMS: I come only to play). Why should I pay?

Speaking of the second person, there is this quite remarkable incident. He also became quite good in English and could speak without any tension. Yet, just before he wanted to go to the gulf for seeking a job, he came to me and told that he wanted to get some more exposure to English. He had not being coming to me for some months. I told him that I was going for a family trip to the next state in our car. He can drive the car part of the way. So he would be right in the midst of an English-speaking environment.

There was a slight altercation on the way between another family member and me. At that time, I made a statement that this young man was coming as my trainee and not as a driver. Later his man looked quite distanced from me. On my query he said that I had insulted his father.

‘My father is a driver. When you spoke those words, it is equivalent to insulting my father’. The actual fact is that his father was an independent driver and not coming as a driver to a household. Apart from this, I need to mention that when taking up any training, I have this problem. When training workers, it is ideal that managerial class persons are not present. When training managers, worker class persons should not be there. I have faced this problem. For, when one speaks to one group, it is focused on their social status relative to their social juniors or seniors.

Once I did a training for a rich household. {They were into many kinds of real-estate crimes, such as manipulating government records to make forest lands into private holding. Then the huge number of ancient trees would be felled. All involved government officials would be paid heavily}. Their driver also was in the training programme. Naturally he was also getting a lot of money from the thieving business. He was seemingly a member of the household. However, he was still their driver and between them all indicant words were arranged in a hierarchy. My system of training which focused on removing these indicant word codes wouldn’t suit such situations.

Actually the British rule in this geographical area did this very thing. Introduction of English was erasing the indicant code based social links. Thus redefining social relationships. Naturally the upper classes need not condone it.

Now my trying to improve the grade of the young man (then around 24) was taken by him as insulting his own father. Well, I can trace this issue to the British education in ‘India’. When they tried to improve the lower classes, it essentially involved the negation of centuries- old ‘Indian’ social systems. It is quite easy to ignite shallow patriotism by spreading the word that they are out to denigrate ‘our’ traditions! ‘Our’ traditions which made dirt of a majority section of the people and disallowed their womenfolk to even to cover their nudity fully!!