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 The Memoirs of a Black Englishman
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Posted on 01-13-08 9:48 PM     Reply [Subscribe]
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My Cousin Vinney
----------------------------

"Thyaas thoos thyas" was what Vinay, or Vinney as he called himself, sounded like to Hari. Vinney was seven,two years my junior, recently back from England and spoke no Nepali. Hari was fifteen, originally from Sindhupalchok and worked in Vinney's family as a domestic helper and he spoke no English

"What is he saying?" Hari asked me. I shrugged unable to decipher any of what my cousin said. I could speak, write and understand English, or so I thought till I heard the gobbledygook coming out of my cousin's mouth. I guessed it was English because I could catch every fifteenth word. What a strange brand of English it was! I used to come first in class, including English class, and it bruised my infantile ego that I could not make any sense of the sounds my oh-so-sophisticated cousin uttered. What was as bewildering was how all the elders heaped so much praise and attention on him. Surely there must be something right about him, something that balanced those incomprehensible words flying out of his mouth that made him so special to the elders? He looked just like the rest of us, in fact he was darker than the rest of us, yet he spoke a tongue we did not understand , behaved in a way we could not relate to and did peculiar things like complain about some sort of paper missing from the toilet. Paper in the toilet? What did he think the toilet was - a library?

"I can't understand a word of what he says. He speaks just like Bob but looks like Rajnikant" Hari complained referring to the Caucasian villain in Bollywood movies who spoke painfully broken Hindi and the dark-skinned stunt master from Madras whose numerous stunts included throwing a cigarette up towards the heavens and lighting it with a bullet from his pistol. To this day I have never understand how the velocity of that bullet did not alter the trajectory of the cigarette or if it did, how perfectly it reversed the trajectory and set it on a direct path towards his mouth. But then I've always been a bit of a geek.

"Hello mister, how do you do, nak bhari singan chak bhari goo!" I blurted out poking fun at my cousin's perfect English. Hari burst into a hysterical bout of laughter. I am still taken aback by how mean I could be as a child.

"Try saying that" I taunted him

"What, what, what?" Vinney looked confused. That made me happy. For once I knew something he didn't.

That night I asked my parent what language Vinney spoke

"But why is it different from the English they speak in my school?" I inquired. I can only imagine what question Vinney must have asked his deeply embarrassed parents.

"One day you can go to England and speak just like that" my mom told me. She didn't answer my question, but the idea of a trip to England was distraction enough for me to forget about my cousins peculiar tongue

"What do they have in England that we don't have here?"

"Double decker buses, soldiers in big hats, electric toys, police cars"

Yes, in that case I definitely wanted to go to England. I had seen that battery-operated remote-controlled police car that Vinney kept under his bed and didn't let anyone touch. It had blue flashing lights and could make the howling sound of a police car, ambulance or fire engine depending on which switch you hit. It even had a megaphone you could speak into. Vinney would say something in his accented English into the megaphone that sounded like a muffled version of "pullover". I didn't get it. The only pullover I knew was what we otherwise called a "high-neck sweater" in Nepal. Maybe fugitives in England wore pullovers.

"But if I go to England, nobody will understand what I say, like nobody understands Vinney here" confusion reigned supreme in my mind. What if they tell me their version of naak-bhari-singan and I didn't understand a word of it and had to ask my parents the same embarrassing question Vinney asked his. I shuddered at the very thought of being humiliated in a foreign land.

"If you stay in England for six months you'll speak just like Vinney!" my dad was the perennial optimist in the family and he was never short of words of inspiration.

"I want to become an English soldier" I said looking at the picture of a Grenadier guard taken outside of Buckingham Palace with my parents standing on either side of him. I liked the idea of being a soldier in a foreign land. No I don't have Gurkha blood in me, although my Baishaki boju in Gantok thinks we might be remotely related to the Gurkha soldier whose statue stands outside the Ministry of Defence in London; but then she also thinks we are distant cousins of Danny Denzongpa, Baichung Bhutia and Prashant Tamang; and given how Darjeeling is making world headlines, that list will only grow I am sure. What better way to go off to a strange land than as soldier with a gun. Nobody messes with a soldier.

"Eentu meentu london ma, unko baba paltan ma, tini nini nini jhyappa!" I heard my sister play outside with her friends.

***

The pukka-Englishman
----------------------------------

England soon turned into an obsession. That March I went back to boarding school, my home away from home, and I ran into things English everywhere. I started to notice things around me that had always been there but never caught my attention. Like the picture hanging in the school library of Princess Margaret wearing a bizzare hat at Ascott; it was taken by a former principal on his trip to England who could go on and on about the event whenever he was asked . I started paying attention to the names of the food served in the school dining hall, words that I had earlier mispronounced because I didnt care what they meant like "short bread", "scones","hot grams". Hot grams? How can it be called that when my mum, that epitome of a modern woman, calls it bhujia? Why did the caterer keep referring to dal as "dawl"? What's more, I came to learn that I was seated in the "Hindu" section of the dining hall because I did not eat beef and my snotty friend, the one whose father was a planter in a tea-estate in Assam and whose mother baked "queens" cakes, was seated in the "English" section.


That was too much for me to take in. I had to move to the English section. Hindu section sounded so, err, so, mmm, so strange: I didn't know what exactly it meant to be seated in the Hindu or Engish sections but something was just not right with the sound of "Hindu". As far as I knew Hindus were those people who shaved their heads, wore tupis and put tika on their foreheads in the shape of a paper clip broken in half. No, that wasn't me. I didn't know what exactly the English looked like, but I certainly was not one of those Hindus. If I could move over to the English section, I wouldn't eat the beef; I couldn't because it sounded so yucky; but I would pretend to eat it and throw it under the table when no one was looking.

So that night I went up to the matron in charge of the dormitory and told her I needed to be seated in the "English" section.

"The English left forty years ago, but they forget to take this one with them" she snorted, dismissed me with a wave of her hand and re-seated me the next morning in the beef-eating section.

***

My sister had given me a book from Enid Blyton's "The Five Find-outers" series the previous year as a birthday present. Like I did with anything that was not a police car, plane or firetruck, I had tossed it into the shoe section of my cupboard alongside my smelly sports shoes and my pet stag beetle. It was during the Easter Holidays; the boys from nearby towns had gone home to spend time with their families, the Christians to celebrate Easter and eat easter eggs and mince pie and all the other delicious goodies their mothers supposedly baked, the rest who could go went just to spend time with their parents. Those from faraway places like me stayed back with other boys from even more far-away places. I accidentally pulled out the book while searching for my beetle. I wiped off the mould that was beginning to form around the edges, probably the result of the thick-gravy I had spilled on it as I clumsily fed my beetle. With all my close friends away and nothing else to do I started reading the book. The book captivated me and I did not move, except for bathroom breaks and meals, and finished it in a day. I discovered other boys too read the same series and by the time the summer holidays had come around in May, I must have read two or three books in the series. I wanted to be like Fredrick Trotteville, the lead protagonist and the smartest of the lot. I wanted to own a Scottish Terrier called Buster, drink lemonade, have a high-tea of scones and ginger-bread and ride my bicycle down the narrow cobble-stone roads of a quaint village, past the vicarage, to the police station to meet a policeman named PC Pippins and outsmart him in front of his superiors. I wanted to take the train to London and buy peppermint and do a whole bunch of things that did not sound one bit crazy (or embarrassing) at the time.

The summer holidays turned out to be a disaster. When my mom fried up pakoras, I wanted meringue cakes. When she made chiura-ko-pulau, I wanted cold lamb pie with a jug of freshly squeezed lemonade.

"What's gotten into this boy, huh, Baba" my bewildered mom would ask my dad

"He is trying to become an Angrej. A kala-angrej" my dad dismissively laughed off my forays into Englishness much to my annoyance. I wasn't trying to be like anyone. I was no different from an Angrej as far as I was concerned. Angrej, I could accept that noun, but only grudgingly so, but the present-continuous verb "trying" and the despicable adjective "kala" raised my hackles.

I was not just a head-strong kid, but physically strong as well, thanks in large part to the Horlicks and Boost I drank in the hopes of miraculously turning into a pilot. The burst of sugar from these drinks would temporarily transform me into the neighborhood bully who often found himself coming home with a torn shirt or a bloodied nose. The closest Horlicks got me to flying was me leaping over the compound wall after Rishab's sister set the dog on me for knocking her brother cold and then jumping on top of him like Hulk Hogan delivering his coup de grace. I rushed headlong towards my dad like a charging bull out to flatten the matador. I was no match for him. My mother's Horlicks was powerless in front of my grandmothers dudh and makai. To add insult to injury, my dad used his height advantage to grab me by the waist and held me up in the air for a whole minute as I kicked and screamed. Then he threw me up and grabbed me on my way down; he did this a couple of times all the while laughing heartily at my peculiar experiment with Anglophilia.

There is a set of English crockery in my house that my parents brought back with them when they returned from the UK. My dad completed a Masters in Civil Engineering and Urban Planning on a British government scholarship and returned to Nepal with dreams of turning Kathmandu into a well organized and bustling megapolis. He probably didn't have the money then to buy the crockery set at Harrods or an upscale location. I suspect it must have been Marks and Spencers or whatever discount store existed at that time. Discounted it might have been in London, but it was prized possession in my household in Kathmandu. That dinner set only came out when we had very special guests.

Still high on my English trip, I refused to eat in the Hulas stainless steel plates that my mother laid out on the dining table. "I want the sisa-ko plate".

As the youngest kid, I was the prince of my middle-class home, my little fiefdom. "No" was the initial answer I got. Dark clouds soon formed over my head and the haloed look of a martyr showed up on my face. Out came the English plate.

"I need a fork and knife" I probably deserved a slap. Instead I got a pair of shiny silverware also from that same store in England.


***

The White Nepali
---------------------------


I wanted to be all sorts of things as a kid. I wanted to join the army and wage war on the enemy. My uncle bought me combat boots and a uniform of the Royal Thai Army from Bangkok. I neatly blacked out the work "Thai" and replaced it with "Nepal". I wanted to build a powerful army and invade India and capture the state of West Bengal, where I was studying, so that Nepal could have access to the sea. I would then add Assam and the other Northeast states to Nepal's territory and we could use the petroleum found in India's North-east to become self-sufficient in oil production and not have to rely on India for anything. This was against the back-drop of the Indian blockade on Nepal. That dream lasted for about three months. It was the police right after that. I saw the Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) battle it out in the tea gardens of Darjeeling and I was fascinated with the idea of joining the police. I would fight the bad guys back in Nepal, those people whom I heard my parents talk about as smugglers,I would capture the dacoits along Nepal's border with Bihar and be granted a medal by the King. I would be the good cop catching the scourge of society like DB Lama and Bharat Gurung. Rumor had it that Charles Sobraj had escaped from an Indian prison and crossed the border into Nepal. I would arrest him and take him to court. I would protect the world, especially my beloved Nepal, from the evil doers.

That dream too lived and died it's natural death. I had moved on to becoming a pilot, doctor, astronaut, politician, UN secretary general, scientist, tennis player, basketball player, footballer, boxer, guitarist, movie star, teacher, preacher, you name it. I am none of those now, yet I sometimes wonder if I am a little of all of those in spirit. Being English soon turned out to be very boring compared to the alternatives. Shooting at dacoits in the tribal areas of Bihar was much more exciting than riding a bicycle in a sleepy English village. I forgot about the Meringue cakes and instead I settled for pastries from Glennary's or Annapurna Coffee Shop. Someday I would go to England and explore all the places that I had read about and heard my teachers and other visitors to England talk about. Someday in the future. I had more important matters to attend to in the present.

I was back in Kathmandu that winter. Vinney now called himself Vinay and was going to school in Kathmandu. Although it was supposed to be an English-medium scool, none of the students spoke to one another in English, and in a couple of months he had pretty much forgotten the language.

"How are you?" I asked him

"Thik chha" he replied with a perfect Nepali enunciation. He had perfected Nepali to the extent where he said "garni" instead of garne, "khani" instead of khane and even "hagni" instead of hagne which totally bewildered me.

We played chor-police, rode our bicycles in the neighborhood gallis and bought marbles at the local store. Gone was the incomprehensible English accent. In fact, he did not speak a single word of English. "Aiyaa", and not ouch, was what he said when he fell off his bike. He now used words I did not understand like zhinchalimobia, hareeb, raddi. He knew all the kids in the neighborhood and everyone wanted to be on his team when we played chor-police. Then there was me, in my Indian-accented English, trying hard to fit in, mispronouncing every third word of Nepali, speaking malformed sentences and completely bastardizing the language. He looks like one of us but speaks like a retard they must have thought. He is faking it, putting up an act, trying to sound like a foreigner, thinking he is a cut above us; that was what the boys were surely thinking. Our roles had reversed; the hunter had become the hunted. I was the weirdo, not Vinney. I was the one who spoke an odd language and talked about peculiar things no one understood.

"Hyaaa, kya ho testo myari go roun bhanya" one of the kids mocked me as I spoke about how hard I could push on a merry-go-round.

"Ha ha ha ha" instead of one person, Hari, laughing at Vinney, it was six people, Dhiraj, Alok, Basant, Prashant, Sushil, Niraj, laughing at me. "Vinay came from England and he can speak proper Nepali, and you came from jabo India and you can't?"

Three months later, when it was time to go back to school, I couldn't speak a word of English either.

***

I live in Holland Park, London, these days. It's cold and rainy here today. A pot of Darjeeling tea sits on my desk. I took Vinney, his wife Junu and my girlfriend Dipti out for high tea at the Claridges today. We talked about old times and laughed our hearts out.

Last edited: 16-Jan-08 05:27 PM

 
Posted on 01-13-08 10:01 PM     Reply [Subscribe]
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zhinchalimobia............................ lol i know what is it... nice one sire

 
Posted on 01-14-08 1:48 AM     Reply [Subscribe]
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Gazer, I remember those days of having to stay back at school when the holiday breaks came about since my parents couldn't make it all the way from Ktm.  And about the hindu section...Well, we had veg, egg-veg and non-veg sections.  LOLs  I guess most of the boarding schools in the Darj hills were similar in that aspect.   hahaha  Also, many a times, I really tried hard at being "angrej" to the amusement of my friends and folks who I felt back then simply had no class.  hahaha  These days I've learnt to look back and laugh at myself for being a jackass back then.  All good now!

Nice work again bro.  Keep writing.  BTW, if I were to guess, I'd say you must either be a Paulite or a spadgie.  Correct??


 
Posted on 01-14-08 8:46 AM     Reply [Subscribe]
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i really enjoyed that, though i must say i'm slightly mad cause i'm late for work now....
 
Posted on 01-14-08 9:37 AM     Reply [Subscribe]
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nice narration there, SG. enjoyed it


 
Posted on 01-14-08 4:37 PM     Reply [Subscribe]
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Had a chance to read earlier in the day but sorry for not thanking you until this late. Your choice of words makes me read all your posts in Sajha. Please, do keep on writing. Thank you.
 
Posted on 01-14-08 6:37 PM     Reply [Subscribe]
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Maverick, NPL2US, Torikophul : Thanks for your comments.

Samsara:  As always thank you for reading and  leaving your thoughts behind. I should have disclosed that this is not entirely my own story although it does draw from many of my own experiences. For the sake of those whose stories I have borrowed, stolen or drawn inspiration from, I have left out the name(s) of the school(s) on purpose.

Porcelina: Thank you for your comments. Hope it wasn't too bad getting to work this morning.

Thanks to all the silent readers out there as well for reading.


 
Posted on 01-14-08 7:54 PM     Reply [Subscribe]
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A nostalgia .... loved it.
 
Posted on 01-15-08 4:45 AM     Reply [Subscribe]
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Nice story!!

made me think for a moment...

keep writing...always love to read :-)

 
Posted on 01-15-08 7:11 AM     Reply [Subscribe]
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S.G, Good one, reminded me of good old hostel life when we used to play Baseball and all the neighbouring children used to watch us thinking what the hell were they playing? We had few Gora (English), Voluntary teachers in the school, and we use to have the same problem as you when Vinay first came from England, understanding them.

Thoroughly enjoyed it.

By the way, We don't live far, hope we will catch up someday.


 
Posted on 01-15-08 9:01 AM     Reply [Subscribe]
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A wonderful read, and I somehow relate to it as I went to school in India. Though I did not mispronounce any nepali words, I did have the tendency to insert some hindi words in my Nepali sentences back at the time. I would use words such as "nahi, kyon, kya." I remember once I had come back from India for summer break and my parents asked me how my trip was. I said "Ma raat bhari soyeko chaina." My mom started laughing like crazy.. and I was called dhotini. Of course after that I completely stopped doing that. I only got an occassional "nahi" out of my mouth and would be totally oblivious of it. LOL

Thanks for the wonderful story. Please write more, it is always a pleasure to read your writings!


 
Posted on 01-15-08 9:03 AM     Reply [Subscribe]
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P.S: "Paper in the toilet? What did he think the toilet was - a library?"

This like cracked me up completely!


 
Posted on 01-15-08 10:40 AM     Reply [Subscribe]
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Oho, I'm nostalgic now..
Loved playing "Eentu meentu london ma, hamro baba paltan ma, eeschoola (remember how we used to say iskool, he he) ko pale dai, pahilo ghanti bajai deu, tini nini nini jhyappa"
Loved it Sajhagazer..thanks.

 
Posted on 01-15-08 11:08 AM     Reply [Subscribe]
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What a great piece !

Not only had I dreamed about becoming pilot, doctor, footballer, musician or as your said you name it but also had  dreamed about being a notorious dacoit , a very professonial gambler having hunch for every card, then a sniper and what not again. 

Time and again, even I had felt urgency to incorporate English to seclude myself from rest others but today when I am secluded by my very own, I think my acts were stupid and futile. Certainly there are some benefits too.

 


 
Posted on 01-15-08 12:28 PM     Reply [Subscribe]
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Addressed to ‘I’.

 

..........

 

“…….. my Baishaki boju in Gantok thinks we might  be remotely related to the Gurkha soldier whose statue stands outside the Ministry of Defence in London”

J I might as well start watching BBC’s “Who Do You Think You Are?” programmes – we could well be cousins, others things being equal!

"short bread", "scones","hot grams".

 

How about  â€œYorkshire pudding”, “black pudding”; pie & potato thingies: “mushy pie”, “mashed pot’to”, “shepherd/cottage pie”, “steak&kidney pie”??  Pie everything.  There is then Bangers and mash, and the Sunday roast.  And oh, Fish and Chips – what else, the quintessential English delicacy!

 

“”Enid Blyton's "The Five Find-outers"”

Trotteville aside, both Bertie Wooster and Jeeves would have just as happily kept you company – thanks, PG Wodehouse.

 

…………

 

so you live in ‘Olland Park eh?  an you ‘aav go’ a “tube” station dere, innit??  Piccadilly Line, innit?  Been dere once wif me ol gurfren and a few geezers for a laaga (lager) or too, is luvly dere, pubs are smashin’, innit?

 

Hay, go’ ta pick up de dog ‘n bone, ‘cuse me.. laterzz geeza!

 

********

Sajha Gazer,

Such a refreshing read about - to borrow Wilfred Owen’s famed appellation – ‘Dear Old Blighty’!

 

Really funny – enjoyed the read.  You did 'take me back to dear old Blighty'!  Do keep it coming err.. mitey.  J

 

Ps:  do excuse the Cockney burr above!  Do let me know if you need its translated version!  J 


 
Posted on 01-16-08 6:25 PM     Reply [Subscribe]
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Hyperthread, Cerine, SNDY : Thank you for your comments.

Rythm: Thanks for reading. I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Agony of Love. You have done a remarkable job so delicately weaving into words the pain of love and  loss.

Bhakunde Bhut: Thanks. I can relate to the sentiment. What I love about life is being able to look back at all the  things I did growing up and laugh about it. I laugh sometimes at the absurdity of some of it, sometimes at the foolishness of it but most of the times at the innocence of it all.  

My favorite quote on this account:

"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing." -George Bernard Shaw

Sandhurst Lahure: Thanks for your post.  I am laughing out loud at your perfect Cockney. Henry Higgins would probably have had you "hung for the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue".  That was another Angophilic obsession of mine at one time.

Talking about pies, English food once fascinated  me. I dreamt of eating all the goodies so articulately described in her books. Then one day I had Sheppard's pie and concluded man was invincible. There were no limits to his powers of  culinary tolerance.  

I still love the 3 English Cs namely chips, confectionery and curry. And the pint too.

Thank you all for reading. Hope to meet you again another time, another place.


 
Posted on 01-27-08 1:29 PM     Reply [Subscribe]
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.What a vivacious and soothing yarn, enjoyed it throughly! A tale of a young mind that once dreamt of being Nancy Drew, agents Moulder/Scully who would solve cases, an artronaut who would make a breakthrough, a marine biologist who would explore the life under the sea, a CNN corespondant, a tennis player and what not - an infinite dream of being many-in-one!

Hope to hear more from you , Gazerji!


 
Posted on 02-12-08 12:30 PM     Reply [Subscribe]
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hie,, sajha gazer 

                           i love all your stories, you are truely gifted. you sure have a way with words. this piece was amazing, loved it from the beginning to the end. Also, i was laughing so hard, that everyone was just staring at me at the library. Extremely witty, and fun. keep it up, hopefully lots more to come.

 


 


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