Remember me? I am Professor Seth.
Once I taught you geography. Now
I am retired, though my health is good.
My wife died some years back.
By god's grace, all my children
Are well settled in life.
One is sales manager
One is bank manager
Both have cars.
Other also doing well, though not so well.
Every family must have black sheep.
Sarala and Tarala are married,
Their husbands are very nice boys.
You won't believe, but I have eleven grandchildren.
How many issues you have? Three?
That is good. These are days of family planning.
I am not against. We have to change with times.
Whole world is changing. In India also.
We are keeping up. Our progress is progressing.
Old values are going, new values are coming.
Everything is happening with leaps and bounds.
I am going out rarely, now and then
Only, this is price of old age.
But my health is OK, usual aches and pains.
No diabetes, no blood pressure, no heart attack.
This is because of sound habits in youth.
How is your health keeping?
Nicely? I am happy for that.
This year I am sixty nine
And hope to score century.
You were so thin, like stick
Now you are man of weight and consequence.
That is good joke.
If you are coming again this side by chance
Visit please my humble residence also.
I am living just on opposite house's backside.
The Professor, by Nissim Ezekiel
To think that this was written almost half a century ago! (You might also try The Patriot by the same poet). How might the poet have felt if he had lived and observed the 'English-educated' crowd in today's India, where most English teachers themselves don't have the faintest inkling any more about the wretchedness of this pidgin that passes for English (as I should know)?
Horrifying thought: given our numbers, our determination to mangle the language, and the speed with which we are spreading all over the planet, this might be imposed as the International Standard fifty years from now!
Quiz to the readers: how many odd things could you find in the poet's mimicry of Indian English (remembering that language is always a vehicle of culture)?
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11 comments:
Sir,
I think, the content of the whole post had been thought out in any language but English and translated directly to the latter. So it naturally turned out to be a mimicry of Indian English, which is often a crude and inconsistent translation of one's thoughts in some native Indian language. :P
Sayak
Quite right, Sayak - one major problem with us is that most of us think in the vernacular and then translate word for word into English, which makes our communication so stilted and unidiomatic!
One mistake you made, though, is that the poet's writing didn't 'turn out to be a mimicry of Indian English'; he did it deliberately, with a satirical motive. Ezekiel himself knew the language very well, and so it pained him (as it pains me) to see it being so ignorantly and brazenly mutilated...
Won't others point out other oddities? There are so many!
Kudos to the poet for imitating the language that's spoken now, so perfectly, that too so many years ago. Sure, it pained him tremendously to pen this down. It is similar to an eagle committing suicide by jumping off a skyscraper.
I am living just on opposite house's backside.
People are attracted to BACKSIDEs, err using 'backsides' in their speeches a lot these days. ;)
Sayak
I'd pitch it at 23 without including the missing articles and the missing 'this', 'it', 'is' and 'my', and some other missing words which account for some 16 other oddities that I can spot - although I wouldn't bet on the numbers, Suvro da.
There's some sort of an oddity in almost every line apart from the first. Even there I'm tempted to add a 'Do you...' although 'Remember me?' sounds fine to my ears if it weren't for all that follows.
There's - 'My wife died some years back'(ago), 'my health is good'(in good health), the line preceding the 'black sheep' bit, the bit about India and about values 'going and coming' 'I am going out rarely'(gah), 'now and then only' [double gah] (which I thought was a peculiarity only among the speech of some/many Carmelites), '...price of old age'(I would use a safe 'the costs of old age'), everything happening with leaps and bounds', '...your health keeping?' 'Nicely?' (Egad) 'This year I am 69'...and then there is that 'issues' used in a peculiar way - and all this is just grazing the surface and the most embarrassing bit is that I know I carry around some of the ones contained and some other oddities besides, and they pop out when I'm least expecting them to.
I remember reading only one of Ezekiel's poems Night of the Scorpion in our Panorama. It was in one of the editions - ours or an older one, I can't remember. One can read that too to know how well he did know the language.
Thanks for this post, Suvro da. Rather humbling in a way. And I really mean humbling.
Brilliant, Shilpi. But there's more to see. Let's wait for more comments to come in. As I hinted earlier, the way we use a language - any language, but more so an alien one - gives away a lot of cultural markers, not all of them very edifying!
No, I've become slow. I didn't even point out to the cultural oddities if that's what you were talking about.
It seems to be such a 'regular' conversation to overhear while out for a Sunday grocery expedition. While in Calcutta I may have even overheard something of the similar sort for all the years that I did Sunday groceries or got the morning milk or waited at the bank or stood in the queue of the railway ticket counter or waited around with a relative who needed some medical check-up...It needn't be a professor.
It could be a "Bimal Babu, father's old friend? Yes ? You remember ? You were very small then. Now you have matured. Yes ? Working in banking? Good. Good. Very good prospectives. And married ? Yes ? Two children? Boy and girl ? Yes, boy needed for family line and girl is sweet. Car as well ? You have purchased ? Yes, car is must, must, must these days - no ? Me, I have car and my two sons have new cars...."
Who knows I may have ended up being and sounding like this professor with some things going in a different way.
I had this vague feeling of trepidation while reading the poem the first time around that Professor Seth was going to say -
'Once I taught you Geography. Now I teach young people English...'
And come on Suvro da - don't embarrass me by saying that there was anything brilliant about the previous comment. And this is the only language I happen to know, and not as well I should! What do you say about that?
Take care.
Shilpi
Egad. That was a typo. "...not as well as I should" I meant to say!
Notice, also, the deeply ingrained sense of inferiority ('my humble residence', an expression used customarily for ages even by people who lived in palaces!), never completely covering up the urge to boast over vulgar trifles (as in pointing out one's own - quite feeble - joke, in case the interlocutor missed it), the silly habit of referring to grown men as 'boys' (again, translating unthinkingly from the vernacular, in which it happens to be valid usage), the absurdity of expressions like 'our progress is progressing', the ingrained urge to walk with the herd (and Auden thought that the Unknown Citizen was to be found in 20th-century Britain!) wherever the herd goes ('I am not against', so long as nobody who matters is 'against'), the crass materialism evident in the manic desire to hang on to life, no matter how vapid and inconsequential, for as long as one can...
Sharat Pandit, aka Dadathakur, used to say 'shabaan makhlei shaheb hoy na hey' (soaping yourself alone won't make you a westerner). How well that applies to the way Indians have by and large made use of the English language! What we can do is to vulgarize it beyond recognition. How much better an idea it would have been if we had stuck to our native tongues, and at least used them elegantly...
Oh, I missed that bit about the sense of inferiority - I was wondering whether it had to do with something else...
I missed the cultural implications about the joke although it sounded plain silly.
The other parts - yes - they do stare back at one.
It really is an odd world. I've seen the lack of basic language awareness among young Americans. And English is their native tongue! That is the language they speak, and read and write in. And I'm talking about a majority of students (certainly not all) who come to a good enough university without being able to write basic correct, grammatical and idiomatic English. There is something flawed - very seriously flawed in an education system, which doesn’t take language skills seriously. It can't possibly be happening all over the world though. Why should 17/18 year olds and some 21 year-olds not use their native tongue or any one language correctly?
And as for your pertinent point regarding cultural markers...maybe I'll include a snippet some day.
The other bit I was thinking about: these days who knows – many Indians might read the poem by Ezekiel, and think it sounds perfectly fine…
Take care...
Shilpi
Oh, but it has actually happened, Shilpi: there was a teacher in one of the most 'reputed' schools in this town who 'taught' this very poem in class for several years without even a suspicion that it was meant to be a piece of satire!
Savour something of a piece with what I have been saying in this post. Here's an email I received yesterday from a complete stranger in her early 20s, titled 'Query about career'; I quote it verbatim:
"I don't have much knowledge about u but as far as i know that u addressed yourself as a teacher,professor and career counsellor. So,I think that u can only solve my small problem rather i can say that it is small for u but not for me! I am a student of 2nd yr law from calcutta university with a background in humanities; interested in psychology,journalism and public relations; have done diploma in computer course (financial accounting).
now i am too much confused about my future career. i want to know that the subjects in which i am interested could help me in future with my law background?if yes then how it can help me?
i would be very grateful if u help me to take the most important decision of my life."
Enjoy. Or weep!
Egad!
Egad!
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