How they take the mile!

I have seen this feeling of being at par with everyone, coming to people who emerge into English from very low ‘Indian’ social standards. See this quote of a comment by an Indian on an Indian website reacting to the US President Obama’s call to STOP OUTSOURCING: buddy barack must have gone out of his highly questionable mind, when he spoke all these crap. he must understand one thing.

Now this is a universal issue of ‘Give an Inch and they will take a mile!’ with giving a little leeway to lower class people. However, the person quoted just above wouldn’t be a lower class in India, but rather a rich Indian with one foot in the US. Now, these type of persons present an ambivalent stance. For one thing, they would be the persons who would be keeping the other lower financially placed ‘Indians’ below them with lower indicant words. They understand the terrible levels of freedom that they can use in English in a most casual manner. It is this very understanding that makes them dislike the prospect of the lower-placed persons in India learning English. They understand that the moment their servant classes learn English, they would very fast lose their stance of obsequiousness.

Arming an adversary

Actually, this kind of language training is not based on innate and traditional English systems. Rather it is the direct encroachment of feudal language codes into English usage. Lower placed persons, the moment they feel they can bring down a person with no personal casualty, will go in for the using of lower indicant words. If they feel that they can get away with it, they will use words like Thoo, Nee, USS, Avan etc. and even words like Eda, Edi etc.

The innate English posture is to give a position of dignity to the other person. However, when giving such a leeway to feudal language speaking persons, what is being done is arming up of very dangerous adversaries.

Corroding the vitals

I wrote so much to denote the apprehensions that had gripped me many years ago, as I saw persons with bare understanding of English traditions getting accommodated in English nations. I had fears some more than thirty years back that the English usage of Mr., Mrs., and Miss would fast become a sign of some funny pert ***iness and soon get erased from common usage. I fear that my apprehensions have come true. It may however seem that a sort of outlandish egalitarianism has been achieved by this change. It is a false impression. What has been achieved is the corroding, by utterly low quality persons, of standards that had been built up by English over the centuries.

When newer levels of irritations bore in, the native-English speakers will be forced to react in the same tone. That brings in more dirtying of the nations and its antique population.

What the encroachers bring in

Now let me mention both the effects these encroachers into English are capable of doing. One they will strive to keep the local ‘Indians’ in a level of subordination and obsequiousness natural in their innate feudal language, and actively try to stop them from learning English. They will

use the lower level indicant words to continue their despoliation. At the other end, they will move to English nations and try to bring down the class of people who they feel are of lower level jobs. For, their conceptualisation of the common man there would be based on their own native language social visualisation. See this image of a part of an article that came on Huffingtonpost. The words ‘lowly carpenter’ is used about carpenters in England. Even though the writer of this article need not be an ‘Indian’ born person, what she is extruding is the current social understandings based on a few items including that one I mentioned here.

See the below images. The fact is that it is dangerous to be under the Indian carpenters, than under the 'lowly' English carpenters, in terms of indicant code usage!

Computer Geniuses of India

It is here that I need to mention about the Computer Geniuses of India. Some fifteen to ten years back, I was intrigued by one fact. This was connected to my understanding that knowledge in English was the key to higher international information in its unadulterated form. In many ways, this understanding was not correct. Knowledge in English only brings in a particular quality to the information.

I started seeing people with bare capacity in English doing things which were quite obviously beyond their human abilities. Like bringing out ‘supernatural’ quality image designs, and many other things. It was all done using computers. When speaking about images, there was this thing that I had noticed many years ago. It is that usually when a Tamilian makes a drawing, a very specific Tamil feature will automatically get encoded into the image. Otherwise, it would be a neat copying. Even in copying the native codes would get in to a limited bit. Likewise other persons in India, usually. But not always.

{Here I need to digress and say this: I wrote a Children’s story based in an English setting and gave it to a publisher in Cochin, in the year 1999. He gave it to an English professor, who immediately told him that it was not written by a local person. For, there were no native codes inside the story. That it clearly was a pilferage from some English based website!}

Now, it was seen that relatively uneducated persons (I am not speaking about formal education, but the real education that insists on a good profundity in British English traditions), were bringing out items that were quite different from their actual intellectual and mental calibre.

Computers had started appearing on the social scene. People who had learnt its use were giving out the impression that it was something only fantastic geniuses could work on. Actually, in the year 1998, I did ask a young computer professional as to whether it was possible for me to study computer usage. For, he seemed quite at ease in computers, and at the same time, he had all the mental features of a mediocre. He processed my question through the social codes and understood the grave implications of my question. His answer was, ‘It is not that easy. You are not young and you will not be able to focus your mind on learning computers that easily’.

However, I was learning computer typing from a computer based business premises. Actually, I found that even in the case of learning typing, there were some secrets that were maintained. On the F and J Keys, there are protrusions that are there to help one bring the fingers to the same position. One of the instructors came and told me at an individual level that such a thing was there. He told me that he was giving me this information as a special case.

My next experience was that in this institution, when I asked one instructor as to how to Bold a word, he would come and do it quite fast, and would decline to inform me as to what was the key-board shortcut that he did to get the bolding. Asking for that information was remarked as being too bold or impertinent. That too remarked by lowly educated, youngsters, who would be donning the titles of Saar, Maadam etc. Their hold on to these titles as if their whole life depends on them. For that, what they need is small-time information like these which they try to keep as secret, as if they are Classified-A stuff, in US military intelligence terms.  Actually, one should bear in mind that these people actually have to act thus. For, in feudal languages, ‘respect’ is the most vital thing in social and professional life. This has to be gathered by limiting others’ access to information and skills.

I think that I have mentioned about the scene that I had seen in another institution with regard to teaching PageMaker. That happened barely one year after the afore-mentioned experience. I mention this to inform the reader about the tremendous change from a novice to a reasonable expert I had become in computer usage within a short period of one year.

During that one year, I had been in a metropolitan city and had come to use a computer in my house. Before going there, I once had an occasion wherein I had to print a leaflet. I took the matter to a place called Badagara, which is also a very small town, more or like a big village, on a highway, with feudal social communication everywhere. This is so, even though modern looking buildings are everywhere. I mention this to emphasise that modern infrastructure has nothing to do with modernity. It may also be mentioned that in every modern city in India, this kind of village or feudal social setup is in existence. For, people from these place barge into quality areas and setup small units with their own feudal cultures inside. It is happening even in England. That is the real tragedy.

When I went to a printing place, the general attitude of the village guy who was the owner of the printing shop was as if he was in possession of some exclusive knowledge. I had no problem with that. However, there was a particular level of stupidity that I was supposed to exhibit. However, whenever I speak this gets erased. I could understand his stance. I had experienced this much in government offices, wherein the staff try to make me go round and round with a paper just to make me submit my subservience in knowledge.

This printing shop owner told me that design work could not be done there, as there was heavy work there. It was understandable. He asked me to go to a DTP centre nearby and have it done. Before that he told me in a very grave and condescending manner, that I need to ask them about the software in which they were doing this, and I have come back and get it ‘sanctioned’ by him. {In that year, I had not much idea as to what a software was). I went to the DTP centre. The person there was willing to do the work immediately. It was then that I asked him about the software and that I had to get the concurrence of the other shop owner. At first he looked a bit surprised. But then he fast caught the idea. He also went into a mood of exclusive knowledge. He took a paper and wrote down: PM4. He told me as if I was an idiot, to go and inform the other side that they would ‘create the file’ in the thing whose code name he had written down. I have to go there, get the ‘sanction’ and then come and inform him.

When I gave the paper to the first guy, he looked at it and brooded over it in a very grave manner for some time. And then he made some comments about some other intricate aspects and then ultimately told me that I could inform the other shop that it can be done.