Not knowing English is no shame

English may be a universal language but not knowing it is not a shame. I always thought Indians are better in language command as their tongues wag in at least 4 different languages every day, every time.

As my next-door neighbour at the office jostled into the office with a request the other day, I presumed it to be something else than what he asked for. It was to draft a covering letter for his company brochure. He said he has prepared one but doubted whether he wrote the correct language. I said I could improvise if I get that letter forwarded to my email. He meekly surrendered and said he wrote none. I insisted he should write one and forward me to correct since I had no time to think of writing a letter for him – And I was not in the letter writing business at all.

Word to word correction was imminent. But what surprised me was the last line, which read something like this. “So sir, please allow us one chance to perform on you”.

I wondered whether he was in Phuket. I could not fathom what he wanted to say and called him. He said he just translated from a covering letter he received from some of his clients and it was in Gujarati. It read – “Amne sevano ek mauko aapo” or in Hindi ‘हमें सेवा का एक अवसर दे ” or in plain English “Please give us a chance to serve you”.

But I asked him where this ‘performance’ angle appeared in a letter where he had nothing to perform at all. In the meanwhile, my office boy entered carrying with him an answer for a question that I asked him in the morning about a new office being built on the ground floor. “It is a Sabarkanta sir,” he said. Huh !, What the hell is that??

I then realized he wanted to say ‘Cyber Café’ and went on to get deep into one of the districts of Gujarat. English – not being the mother tongue for Indians – has a history of goof ups in India. There is nothing wrong not to know English. We go through a phase of surviving with many languages that we learn when we are aged less than 6 years.

Compare it with an American or English kid. He only knows one language and that is English. Now if you ask an American child to write couple of sentences, he will look like Mr Beans in a beanbag.

Consider an Indian child. If the child happens to be in Gujarat, then he knows Gujarati, Hindi and English. Many also know Marathi if he happens to migrate to Mumbai and if the child is from another state settled here; he knows at least two more languages.

Now that is the richness of Indian kids. So not knowing English is no sin. But pretending to know it is certainly a problem. If you happen to do that, then some body will ‘perform’ on you that you can easily avoid for the time being.

Binu Alex