NEVER SAY “NEVER AGAIN”!-Part One

NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN!

1. How God gave me a second life!

EFLU—English and Foreign Language University– in Hyderabad DROWNS you in English!

Or for that matter any other language or language specialty if you have opted for it!

Once you are in, you can’t avoid—unless you jump over the wall and escape, in which case you shall have to pay back the stipend amount and damages– getting transformed into a full blooded specialist and expert.Its like scratching a Tartar;you cant escape the consequences!

I, a classic product of EFLU training–am a living example of that expertise in full play! It was the EFLU training that molded me into an ultra-sensitive instrument for helping men and women master English tongue without causing hem any pain at all!ANYTHING  linked to English is easy for me today just as any language anywhere!In fact I used to speak Amharic as fluently as the Ethiopians themselves;this even made them for a while suspect me tob e some CIA agent planted in their country!.

(The reality is that you CAN master this language more easily than Malayalam, a most difficult tongue globally!)

The moment I hear someone unwittingly code mixing any Indian language with English—90% Indians speak English this way and are shameless enough to call what they blurt out “English”—my ears perk up and I can detect the subtlest influence of the L1 or mother tongue on that language.

The moment I make a chance discovery of a script or writing anywhere—including “national” newspapers- with grammar or usage goofs-I analyze why that goof occurred and what might have been the real trigger!

“Crocodile in Loin cloth”? Oh that is Bengali translated into English! “What is your good name?” Ah, that is a Tamil-English cross breed! “I shall return back tomorrow!”? That is a classic mongrel Malayalam expression presented in English without license! “From reliable circles”? Again translation! Overuse of a verb like “said” in a write-up? Undernourished vocabulary!

”A, E, I, O, U” are the vowels of English!” spoken by someone, may be in a train compartment or at a roadside café? Similar is the mispronunciation of words like “status”!

That comes from wrong teaching at school level by some misinformed “teacher” gargoyle! The insertion of “h” in a name like “Bindu”?  An influence of a language from a neighboring region—in this case Tamil Nadu! (Hundreds of such goofs can be collected into a compendium if you go through “Letters to the Editor” in an English newspaper! Or make an analysis of office correspondence in public offices, say during the 2000-2015!)

I can’t avoid detecting goofs from a distance because of the training that made me what I am today. Naturally if someone makes a mistake in using English I don’t call it a mistake or upbraid him at all. I don’t dirty his script with red ink at all. This is because I understand what a language “mistake is in reality.

I know-thanks to EFLU training that it’s his Broca’s and Wernicke areas on the left side of the brain that caused him to deviate from accepted usage.[This region is right in front of your left ear at the same level. Your language skill is stored there!]

It’s a cliché for me today that I decided to pursue my research studies far away at EFLU(the then CIEFL) in Hyderabad owing to a quite personal challenge that I encountered post wedding in this city without having any elder person to help me get it ironed out. Suffice it to say that within months after my farcical alliance in what used to be called an Exchange Alliance, I found myself toying with suicidal thoughts and even made an attempt once before thinking of my numerous obligations remaining unfulfilled at that time.

The simple fact is that unlike most of my college-faculty colleagues that succeeded in running their marital lives along with what they called research, I reached the CIEFL on a chilly morning with a suitcase containing only a few items essential for survival in their hostel.

That was in June 1977.The previous 9 months had been Inferno for me in manifold ways in the State capital among my so-called in-laws! Gall and wormwood it was and I don’t even like to think of that trauma any longer!

The Vice Chancellor Dr SK Verma—and later Dr Ramesh Mohan– was a friendly man but a martinet too when it came to extracting the required workload from us. Every single day we had to read up at least 25 references in the library and submit the assignments on the very next day. It was a non-negotiable issue. Every week there were tests in the First Semester to weed out the unfit. Every test script would be graded and if someone got a D or below—E or F that was—he could book his return ticket home forthwith. Those getting A Grade would be noticed for their style of working. Those securing B and C would be admonished to work harder to be able to secure consistent A.

Again no compromise on the timings. We had to be inside our rooms—though we were all college lecturers from across India—before 7 pm sharp so that we could go for supper at the same time. No family rooms and no family life at all except for the faculty. Food patterns was North Indian with only 100 grams of boiled rice per day.

This was how I became work-culture-minded and how I truly understood a college teacher job to be a mediocre job line with 80% underutilization prospects for creativity and also severe soul rusting traps built in! If that was so in my case I realized I owed it to myself to overcome that limitation by making use of extra opportunities for being of use to the world when I was in service!

And this was how, with true genuine understanding and help from the head of the institution where I was serving at the time, plus a government permission to leave the campus without prejudice to my routine work for giving training to others, I made a nice for myself as a language trainer for many training programs –CAIIB, Civil Service, BSRB, PO exams, Competitive tests held by the UPSC, CAT/MAT/ATMA? XAT etc. for MBA admissions, and GRE or GMAT for admission in American Universities!

1. My wins abroad!

EFLU Training sedns you out with its degree ONLY as a world class product, capable of winning anywhere in the world!You CAN’T make a mistake in your specialty-mine was ELT or TESOL!- till you die!

I left India in 1981 December for Addis Ababa, where, after my academic credentials got checked, I was deputed to the Addis Ababa University School of Pedagogical sciences. I was designated as ELT Inspector General, allocated a vehicle—a Toyota Land Cruiser– and  a chauffeur by name Hailu to make inspection at over 4700 schools and also impart training to the English teachers in these institutions.

Actually now you can understand how I lived in that chilly-weathered mountainous nation with a jacket over me, almost all the days traveling over terrains that  were totally unfamiliar and often so muddy that you couldn’t dream of what might happen if your vehicle sank in that mud!

We shall continue this memoir in our next blog!