In my class, history is never boring. It very easily becomes
intertwined with our opinions of how the British treated India. Let’s just say,
that it is a good thing the colonial British and we live in different eras, and
don’t have to meet each other.
Our first lesson of the second term dealt with English education.
The chapter started with an introduction to William Jones, a talented linguist.
I instantly felt a spark of familiarity with this man who knew English, French,
Greek, Arabian, Persian, and Sanskrit. But the way, the anti-Orientalists criticized
the culture and languages of India really angered me. It reminded me of my own
tough history with Hindi, a language I’m leaving behind this year.
In 5th grade, when we moved to India and I got to
know that I had to learn Hindi, I didn’t know what to think. I literally only
knew ‘doodh’ (milk) and ‘mera naam Priya hain’ (my name is Priya). We started
that summer.
I learnt the alphabets within a week, which was good, as I had
so much more to learn! I struggled at school. I would draw pictures of fruits
next to the Hindi word of it (example – drawing an apple next to ‘seb’) while
my classmates read ‘kavitayen’ (poems) which would give me headaches.
In terms of Hindi, my school-changing didn’t help much. The teacher
wasn’t all that great in fifth grade. I still made mistakes – I would mess up
the gender or the tense or the verb.
People would laugh. That was the worst bit of it all. They
would roll their eyes – bringing tears to mine. They still do. They ridicule my
language and my accent. But the fact I got this far is due to the tuitions I
took in Delhi. Gosh, did that help! They transformed me from a pathetic
weakling to a passably good Hindi speaker. I really started picking up and loving
the language. Then, we moved to Bangalore. One more year of Hindi as second
language, and I realized I couldn’t do it. I simply could not do Hindi as my
second language in the 9th or 10th. So I gave it up. It’s now my third language.
My mom still squirms and hisses when I make grammatical
mistakes.
My friends still beg me to shut up.
My relatives still laugh.
But I? I’ll keep on learning, yaar! Agle saal se, main Hindi
ki pariksha nahi doongi; par ab main Hindi ko behad pasand karti hoon. School me subject samaapth, magar meri
zindagi mein uski shuruaath!!
[From next year, I will no longer give the Hindi exam.
However, now I’ve really come to like the language. It has ended as a subject
in school, but has just gotten started in my life.]
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