Just a click away?

During my childhood my house always used to be bustling with people. We were a large family of four children and there were always a couple of cousins from the native village who stayed in our house for their education. There were lots of friends and relatives who visited us and some of them even used to come to chennai, with our house as the boarding place. It was fun and we enjoyed spending time and chatting with loads of relatives. The house was small, but we still managed to have a great time within the limited space. Now we live in better houses but there are hardly friends or relatives who visit us. Even if they do so, it is just for a couple of hours and they think twice about staying with us and doubt the facilities at home and prefer to stay in hotels and make a flying visit. With active social media, now we are in touch with almost everyone who we never met for years. Though its an advantage of the social media, the downside is that we never take the effort to meet someone in person and spend time. we are happy just clicking the like button and relax that we are in touch with the near and dear ones.
Last week our neighborhood uncle who was very active despite his age died. I remembered him as one who used to sit with the watchmen downstairs and chat with them at particular times of the day. He loved spending the time with them as both his son and daughter in law were working and obviously, was feeling lonely at home. I used to wonder whether anybody in  the family or friends circle even bothered how he was doing while staying alone throughout the day. Personally, it came as a shock to realize that this uncle passed away as I had seen him just a few days back happily chatting with the watchmen. During the death ceremonies, there were a huge number of people who turned up and shared their memories about the uncle. But secretly I wondered whether these people ever managed to give him a call when he was alive and even bothered to check out whether he was doing fine.
This is the fate of the older generation today, they are left alone and the younger generation is happy connecting with a distant cousin or long last friend over social media than care to give a call or visit an ageing uncle or aunty or for that matter, even their own parents living away. I realize with pain that my days of loneliness are not too far away.

Back to the past?

  There is a special section in our newspaper which prints the events that happened on the same date 50 years back. It gives interesting insights into the life and events and reporting style of that era. Recently they had published a photograph in this column where it showed a picture of a bandh protest in Kolkatta in 1964 and the crowd that was waiting to get into the train at Howrah station. Until now , I had the impression that the evergrowing population of India is making life very difficult for the present generation and it would have been better if we were living in a peaceful, manageable population of 1960s and 1970s. But this picture changed my perception. Howrah station of 1964 doesn't look better than a church gate station (Mumbai) in 2014.
Especially, in the past 5-6 years, airports in India are worse than the railway stations and in fact , when you stand at the gate to board your shuttle bus, its more like a moffussil bus stand where the conductor screams his heart out calling our for passengers travelling to small towns. Literally,

at the airport, they call out for passengers travelling to different cities. It sounds funny . In fact, after my first trip abroad in the 80's I was treated like a queen in my friends circle, as I was the only one who had boarded an aircraft among them, now even a new born makes its first trip only by flight.

The discussion with my friend was about this population and commuting problems and after seeing the  60's image in the newspaper , I told her that the situation was worse then too. But then she had an interesting take on the whole problem and she said, maybe it will become better in the future because, now even people in villages and small towns are aware of the benefits of having a small family and restrict themselves to having just one child or two children and situation would only become better as the population would dwindle and more people are settled abroad. I don't know whether its a correct observation but if the situation remains the same, in the future, our children can never board a bus, train or for that matter, even a flight on time.

Mind your language!

We had a small get together at a friend's place who we were meeting after a long time. The children were meeting each other after a long time and as usual were caught up with discussing their routines, pushy parents and of course, the teachers and their quirky manners. I was listening to their conversation with interest and happen to notice their jokes about  their teachers English pronunciations.  Though it was quite funny and they were right about their teachers speaking horrible English with wrong pronunciations and wrong grammar, I thought I myself was not great in these departments of the language. Reason being that I studied in a government aided school and then in a government college where teachers and students were from middle class or lower middle class backgrounds. Our English was not great and our confidence was low. We were scared to try talking in English for the fear of being teased by others.

I vividly remember the instance when a girl who had studied in an English convent earlier, joined our class when we were in 8th std.  She carried herself with great confidence and naturally her English was far better than ours and we all were in awe of her. In fact, she became our automatic choice to represent us for any matter we had to discuss with the teachers.Such was the power of the foreign language and mastery over it. To expect a government school kid to master a foreign language that is being learnt from a non-native speaker and have impeccable pronounciation is next to impossible. It might be easier when children study in international schools. But why do we have this mindset that speaking a language with perfect pronunciation (even pronouncing this word is difficult for a non-native speaker) is equal to great knowledge in the language?All of us have come across people who speak the language with bad pronounciation but have profound knowledge in its literature and those who have great pronounciation but know nothing about its literature or do not appreciate its beauty.
My father himself was a great example of a man who had terrific knowledge in various languages like English, German, Sanskrit, Hindi and Tamil, was very well versed in all the languages, spoke them perfectly albeit with an indianized pronounciation. But never was he looked down by native speakers who appreciated his vast knowledge. Actually foreigners feel happy when we speak their language despite our bad pronunciations. It gives us the same pleasure when a foreigner speaks our mother tongue, it might not be perfect, but still we appreciate their effort and feel proud that they speak our language than looking at how perfect they are at it.
I think we should realize that all the Indian teachers who speak English
have not learnt it from native speakers to have impeccable pronunciation and its their knowledge that should matter.