A second illustration: the power of proper introduction

There was another incident in my life. Many years ago, I used to come home to the village where my parents had built a house, during my school/college holidays. I think this incident happened after my graduation, which I had done in a city. The home village was not a home place for me, in the sense that I was not born or brought up there. I had no classmates there, nor was I connected to anyone there from a long-time association. Language-wise also, the local dialect felt like by a cranky way of speaking.

However, when people came home, they treated me with deference in indicant words. To some extent this was due to the social prominence of the house, a bit due to the deference lend to a new person and to some extent to my own outlandish stance.

There was a cow in the house, which was tied to a tree. It was quite obvious that it was not looked after nicely. The place was full of cow dung, and its body was also littered with it. Flies would pester it, and it mooed piteously throughout the daytime. Out of feeling bad about the scene (now it should be understood as a selfish stance in that I wanted to remove a disturbing scene from the vicinity), I used to take the cow to the local river to give it a bath and would even allow it to graze around the river bank. From English, I don’t see too much of a problem that I couldn’t bear. However, in the local feudal language, what I was doing was the servants’ work or of a low-level-household man’s. Moreover, I was quite young. What I was doing was a heinous thing to myself. In fact, many persons who knew me used to feel that I was a bit mad to do this, living in a prominent house.

Not many people in the area knew me by sight, for the village was quite big and sparsely populated at that time. {Now it is teeming with people, with each household having multiplied exponentially in numbers}. Now the problem was that of association. There were other village boys doing this work as servants to some household, or for their own household. They had a social position that was commensurate to their family stature, their own age, and their professional position. However, I was not from that group. It is possible that all these things could be there in English. Yet, English does not have indicant word array.

Once, as I was going through the road, one man identified the cow. But he did not know me. He came near me, peered at me, as if in a slight mood of astonishment and said, in Malayalam: ‘You are the new boy servant working in that house?’ In English, only the word servant can be found objectionable. However in a feudal language, the word for You, is a very powerful content, the negative power of which cannot be understood in English. Again, it was a matter of association. If it was addressed to a servant, it was not a thing that anyone would have bothered.

The cow once ran into a house compound. I ran behind it. Well, it did not do any mischief. However, the householder came out and started using terrible expletives, for he thought I was the servant boy in the prominent household. For, it was inconceivable that a member of my household would do such a thing as taking the cow for grazing. It was again an issue of a mental elevation. Most of the children of my age wouldn’t have minded the speech which was prompted by the lower indicant word categorisation of me. However, I did feel the pull down from a position of elevation that I couldn’t condone. The words Eda, Nee etc. had been used. Here again the context moves to the power of proper introduction that is there in feudal languages comes in. The easy security from all such evaluations and mental attack that pristine English could lend to a person is of a supernatural quality.

This much I digressed just to inform about the issues of ‘being identified with others’ in a feudal language situation. I had this issue with N & S parents also. Even though Ashwina’s and Varuna’s presence was improving the English of their parents and through that their general individuality, the reverse wouldn’t happen. I mean, their presence was not conducive to improving Varuna’s and Ashwina’s personality. For, at their levels, it is sure that they would use only the lower indicant, pejorative form of indicant words. Since they couldn’t speak to them in Malayalam, the word Nee wouldn’t be used. However, they could speak about them, and I am sure they wouldn’t have any qualms about using the derogative form of She, Her, Hers etc. It would be impossible to prevent them in this regard. For one thing, unless the issue is properly explained to them, their attitude would be, ‘We use it to our own children. Why should we not use it on Varuna & Ashwina?’

DIGRESSION

In England, native-English kids moving in close companionship with feudal-language-speaking kids may not achieve any personality enhancement from this account. However the other side would really feel the pouring in of positive codes, that would literally fill them with effusive delightful mental and physical aura.