Second language

There are several advantages to your parents moving cities frequently when you are at school. You don’t have to be in that class where that bullying teacher made your little life miserable. Whether you completed your homework or not, whether you made a 100 or a zero, she always screamed at the entire class – at each one of you.

There is an added advantage if you moved states. If you are stubborn enough to tell the teacher that the second language you studied in your entire 3 years of schooling and the new second language that the new school taught were different; and that your little brain could not accommodate the new second language; and that you wished to maintain your cultural integrity; and if that school did not have a teacher who can teach the second language of your choice, you don’t have to study a second language. It happened to me!

And so for the next two months, for one full hour every working day, I played football by myself, roamed around the corridors, dug out earthworms and threw stones at the mango tree in the adjacent compound in a quest that one day I will be able to make strike one little mango. It however did not last long. If the mango tree had a glass window near it, it is not your mistake that the stone aimed at the mangoes cracked the window. As a 7 year old you think you can get away with it if you kept quiet about it. But not if the occupant of the house complains to the principal and not if you are the only one in the entire school premises to have the licence to roam the campus.

And so for the next year and three-quarters I spent my one free hour at the biology lab that houses preserved specimens such as meek looking snakes, a human kidney, gory lizards and a plastic skeleton.

While it was not entirely comfortable to have a skeleton to provide you company for an hour and your 7 year old male ego prevented you from confessing that you were pissing your pants at the look of it, you can always bank on your parents to move schools for you soon.

And they did. This time I was back to the state where the only second language I studied was the first language of the state and the second language of the school. But there was a problem again. I did not study a second language for the last two years to cope up with the rigours of a 4th standard class. You can always tell the teacher that your little brain with insufficient training will not accommodate the language after a two years break or that you wished to establish national integrity by not being biased at learning just that one second language. But it doesn’t work that way if the teacher happens to yet another bullying teacher who made your little life miserable.

Note: I learnt to read and write Thamizh reading Siruvar Malar from my neighbourhood library. After more than a decade I enrolled myself today into the local library and it brought back memories of my first library. I wanted to write about it and instead my confused, in two minds,uncertain, indecisive levelhead scribbled yet another nonsensical post.