The Curse of the Standards - My English Journey

Prologue

I work as a Management Consultant providing consulting services to companies in Bhutan. As a consultant, my job entails researching, writing and presenting my works to my clients – in English. I am currently on one such assignment, working on advising one of the companies on streamlining their outbound transportation logistics.

Two days ago, my teammates and I presented our findings and analyses to our client company. My boys did a good job. In the evening one of them asked me, ‘Sir, how did my presentation go?’ His intent was good. As an emerging champion, he was looking for feedback, good, honest feedback! I offered my appreciation and suggested a few areas of improvement. Later, we had dinner and parted our ways for the night. That night, as I sat alone in my room at the company’s Guest House in faraway Nganglam, I got thinking.

I began to reflect on my journey of learning English.  

My tryst with English began when I was about seven years old. I was enrolled at the local school in Neoly Bhutan in lower Kindergarten. At Neoly Dalim Primary School, I started learning English together with other subjects such as Dzongkha (the national language of Bhutan), Mathematics, Moral Science and Nepali (my mother tongue). My early days were spent largely trying to capture the English alphabets and attempting to differentiate the vowels and the consonants.

English was and still is the medium of instruction in schools and colleges across Bhutan. Today, when I look back I realize that we didn’t have qualified teachers in our primary school. Learning English, therefore, was tough. I had teachers who pronounced ear as air and air as ire. At home, I had a cousin who sang ‘Here we go round the mulberry bush..’ every night at his attempts to impress dad that he was studying late. Neither school nor home provided much breeding ground for English. And my pronunciation is hackneyed, to this day! Nevertheless, by the time I graduated from Dalim I could read and comprehend short stories and passages from English textbooks.

I spent the next three years in a boarding school, which was far from home. It took me two days to reach the school by a combination of conveyances, including walking. At the boarding school, I was able to learn and work on my grammar. I still remember a time when attempting to speak to a classmate in English I said “They does not know…”. My friend knew his grammar and immediately corrected me. I am grateful to him to this day. The head teacher of the school, Mr. Kerketta, a gaunt and elderly Indian gentleman from the West Bengal tea gardens, taught us the nuances of grammar including changing speech from direct to indirect. By the time I completed class eight from this nondescript government boarding school in Pema Gatshel, my English had sharpened a bit.   

Next, I was sent to Yangchenphug Central School in Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan. Those days it was the only high school in Thimphu and it enjoyed tremendous reputation for its excellence, be it in studies, extracurricular activities, or the facilities provided to boarders. It also had its fair share of notoriety, but that has nothing to do with my learning English.

During my two years in Yangchenphug, I was taught by two English teachers. In class IX it was one Mr. A K Sarkar, a thoroughbred British trained Indian teacher. He took pride in knowing more than one synonym for a given word. A classmate of mine once asked him ‘Sir, what is the meaning of variegated?’ In his inimitable style, Mr. Sarkar closed his eyes, tilted his head up to face the ceiling and started reciting, ‘multi-coloured, parti-coloured, dappled…’ It was only after a couple of girls at the back started giggling that Mr. Sarkar opened his eyes.

In class ten I was taught by one Mr. Pereira, a United Nations Volunteer from Sri Lanka. Although he had travelled a bit, he didn’t know brown sugar. A short story we were learning had mentioned brown sugar; as soon as we reached that word, Mr. Pereira’s natural chocolate face went further brown and he went out looking for help. It fell on John Chiramal to rescue him!   By the tenth standard, we were talking to our teachers and fellow students in English. Talking of teachers, there were quite a few who preferred to converse in other languages than English, including Nepali and Hindi. Then we had our ubiquitous Dzongkha Lopens. So, the environment was not highly conducive for practicing spoken English.   

After Yangchenphug I went to Sherubtse, which at that time was the only higher secondary school, offering class XI and XII, besides being a budding college. There, I was taught by young Canadian volunteer teachers, who were more interested in letching at and romancing with their female students than in any serious teaching.  I don’t remember learning anything serious from the Canadians. As such, the next segment of my academic career did not offer much opportunity to improve my English. The foundation had been laid and thereafter it was up to the individual students to improve their language skills.

After Sherubtse, Sri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi happened in my life. Although it was a college of much repute, it was not exactly Oxford or Cambridge. Hindi had to be learned and honed in order to survive the cacophony and the hustle and bustle of North Delhi. By the time I graduated with Honours in Economics from SRCC three years later, I probably had much better Hindi than any English to sing about!