How a Simple Old-Town Girl Became an English Trainer?
A myth-buster: Life-long learning is the most downplayed skill you can hone and grow
Not all stories with glorious endings start with equal glory, one as mine. Growing up in a mixed Indian culture sans parents, I was exposed to two extreme facets of the milieu. My maternal family was acutely orthodox and paternal, opposite on the same scale, very liberal, to be precise. Each posse had its own agenda to modify the gene and convert me into their kind, biologically, psychologically, and religiously.
Unfortunately, they succeeded with all the bottled chaos in my chest that took decades to settle. I was a mess, screaming inside, digressing from a typical course of the Indian education system of a small-town Convent school. But there are overlapping layers of the story on how changing schools and exposure to polar cultures promised me the moon, which I thought to be glaring solar heat at that time.
Not every youngster has clarity for long-term and immediate goals, and that’s okay!
Roiling with the confusion of orphanhood and unstructured childhood, I was clueless about 5- and ten years plans. Moreover, I burnt the bridges for higher education by entering an almost-juvenile marriage. It couldn’t have been any worse, as the new family had a set of preconceived doctrines on religion — a religion that supposedly defined women on the lower rung of human civilization. I accepted the rank one-fourth-heartedly. But, the whole time, there was something off. Though I couldn’t point a finger, I did not quite come to terms with the idea of being inferior to the other-half population only due to biological and generational psychological differences. That was also because even though I was taught to hero worship the men and not question incomprehensible ideas of human-drafted religion, I was genetically programmed to ask some. But the societal suppression was such that it shrunk my self-assuredness even more like a girl shouldn’t even read newspapers as it gives out leakage to the outer world. With two opposing ideologies- one within, another taught by family- I gradually became a perpetually confused, awkward person. I also acquired the trait of sharp ambiguity to fit in. The phrase, ‘Sharp ambiguity,’ sounds oxymoronic, but I am always sitting on the fence, even for the smallest decisions in my life. I am super ambiguous in all my wakefulness, and my amygdala safely plays a confused clone of me.
In the hindsight, challenges can strip us of the compass! Losing a sense of direction can be intimidating, but stopping half the way is intimidating as well!
I pin my cognitive dissonance on being raised by a highly polar set of people, which I struggle with even in my forties. However, imprisoned as I felt in the societal cage of being a mediocre woman, I unmindfully restarted the journey towards the human I am today. In brief, I finished my basic business undergrads and got into marriage, like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. I never dreamt of being erudite but had this flickering desire. With a life sentence (A metaphor for monotonous marital unison, of course), I revived my passion for reading the stories of courage and love from Reader’s Digest; it felt like moving towards the lighthouse from the rabbit hole. To emphasize, I was on a learning journey, which I did not realize then. Odder still, I even did not realize that I was hanging on a threadbare rope called English Language and was trying to climb uphill with that rope. Surrounded by people who limited the boundaries of women to domesticity and baby-making machine, I was breaking the spell by educating myself.
When I heard some self-styled doyen summoning on that one hidden skill, a human need to gouge, I laughed out and internalized that not everyone possesses the skill. For me, it was searching for a needle in a haystack!
In India, there are two subsets of commoners: One, those who consider English as a language an insignia of class, and second, who count English as a means of pomp and show. ‘She is being prim and prissy’ is the exact phrase in my side of the maternal and marital family said if I spoke in English. I was shamed and invalidated for speaking accented English. With a colossal mindset of English Shaming, I started touching the base by polishing my linguistic proficiency. In a deeper sense, I was educating myself, and with all toxic conditioning, I rated myself as a below-average, half-wit girl unfit for a state-of-the-art world.
My granddad emphasized on the power of reading, and I ridiculed the cliché. But now I realize, that when you read fiction or anything, you go through their journey, living with them and learning even without experiencing them.
However, I read fiction, creative non-fiction, self-help blogs, and documentaries to keep track. Unsure whether I wanted to impress the men of my society or wanted to send the clear message, ‘See how I am growing despite your disapproval, but I consistently got going. Moreover, I used language learning as a coping mechanism during that imprisoned sabbatical. I sat with books and magazines and highlighted and underlined stuff that made sense. I was endlessly scrolling and growing from Khaled Hosseini to Murakami, from The New Yorker to Reader’s Digest. Looking up phrases and spinning home words is my go-to even today. The process raised not only my emotional intelligence but also my perspective. A perspective that was stagnant enough to turn me into a classic misogynist or a self-pitying woman. Quite like my fellow women, who praise and encourage their macho dudes to test their masculinity on the girls of the house like lab rats.
But somehow, random books saved the day, converting me into a lifelong learner, a creative content writer, and a language trainer. When I stand here today, half the way, it feels great to look back, squint to see the journey I have crossed, and also look ahead to chart a trajectory to reach an undecided yet anticipated destination, quite like Ted Talks or a PhD in English in years to come. Today, I train language learners to overcome communication and other linguistic problems, as English is their second Language. I receive heartfelt notes on touching their lives by going beyond my role as a trainer. Because when I train them in a language, I allow them to learn my psychological and emotional perspective, which clearly helps.
My journey might seem chest-heaving for some and simple for others. But for me, it has helped a simple old-town girl (shamed for committing grammar blunders)- reach training in grammar, translating, and blogging for the same. The strange reversal of roles has underlined one downplayed trait of success, lifelong learning. Also allowed an intuition of building an entire journey on a singular strength-English Language.
Remember, starting with curiosity allows you a broader mindset to learn and accept because the more you learn, the more you realize how less you’ve learnt. My story of learning English is a lifelong process, it doesn’t end here, but certainly, the middle rung of growth is glorious.
