THE WAY I LEARNT ENGLISH IN SCHOOL

The days spent at school have been the best of my life. Of course, I did not realise this then. The routine used to seem boring and the strict teachers used to be perceived as the equivalents of villains. My friends and I took pride in coining unique names for the teachers and missed no opportunity to break the rules. Though, now whenever we meet, ‘the golden memories of the school years’ is the topic we all relate to nostalgically. The knowledge, the values and the character that my school instilled in me will always guide me through life. Among all the things learnt at my alma mater, the English language is the one with sweet and bitter experiences

English not being my mother tongue, or of any other students, this alien language took time for us to get acquainted with. Ours being an ‘English Medium Public School’, the prime concern of the teachers was to make us ‘Englishmen’. After the basic ‘ABCs had been hammered into our heads, we were made to memeorise the words and sentences. After three years of schooling the torturous grammar lessons started.

Why ‘is’ is ‘is’ and why ‘was ‘is ‘was’? Why does ‘go’ have three tense forms while ‘give’ is satisfied only with two? Why is the ‘time’ not ‘in’ my watch but ‘by’ my watch? Ah! The list is endless. Many of these questions would still have baffled me had it not been for my English teachers over the years, who used to patiently resolve all my doubts.

Now that we were learning to read and write English, how could ‘speaking’ be far behind? O! The concentration camps started—25 paise fine for any word uttered in Hindi. The parents revolted with the idea of punishing the children and not themselves, and the punishment was flipped to ten ’Sit Stands’ per wrong word. You can well equate the number of ‘Sit- Stands’ I had to do when my fine used to go up to even Rs 200 a month.

I still credit that exercise regime for my strong legs and ‘somewhat’ good command of English.