The trouble was I dreamt in images mostly and seldom in language. Another august body called the Royal School of Dreamy Criticism asked me if I dreamt in English. This line of argument gave rise to what I chose to call the Lactatory School of Literary Criticism. You could write it only in a language you had imbibed with mother’s milk. Yes, fiction, essays, articles, even pornography one could write in English, they said (though nothing like Punjabi for robust abuse). Then as one started publishing poetry in English, critics shook their heads in disapproval. No other trauma intervened for the next fifteen years or so. Why couldn’t the fellow speak English as she ought to be spoken? He had to repeat himself three times to make himself understood. But the fact is that they used slang and if you did not latch on to a phrase, you were held in contempt.Īnd then came my first conversation with an Englishman. It was old slang of course, shipped some three decades ago, which had got lost on the seas, then lay rotting on the docks like dry fish, till it was dispatched by steam rail and later on mule back to those public schools in the mountains.

Nainithal, as it is pronounced in Hindustani, got twisted to ‘Nainitoll’. They could hardly pronounce the names of the towns they lived in. They even spoke their Hindustani with an anglicized accent. Their speech was more clipped, their smiles more condescending. The boys wore blue blazers and school neckties. These were situated in the mountain sanctuaries of Murree and Simla and Nainital. The next threshold was crossed when one encountered boys from public schools. Just because the grammar was correct, and the diction not too awful, one became an object of mockery. My fluency (so called) in English was greeted with derisive laughter. The pronunciation of the school masters and the students bordered on the atrocious. Urdu, Hindi, Sanskrit were given as much importance as English, and rightly so. Many of the boys came from a different social stratum. So I got transplanted to an Arya school, quite a different kettle of fish, really. Not the right type of atmosphere for a growing boy, my father thought. But World War II was raging, the Italian fathers next door were under house arrest, and even a string or two of barbed wire had sprung up around the school. The first school I entered was called Sacred Hearts. To put it simplistically, a child thinks through language and feels through experience. To become fully conscious of writing in the language of one’s erstwhile colonial rulers, one must cross various thresholds of realization. If your father teaches English and you have three thousand books in the house, all in the same language, you have precious few options. You cannot choose your generation, your parents or your language, even a foreign one at times. Old dogmas and bigotries are swept away – and exchanged for new ones.

It ushers in its own symbols, and its own values.

It supplants myths, whole iconographies, world-view, ideologies. Colonial history shows that language can be as domineering as any occupational army. What was achieved was something much greater in dimensions. In an alien land, language itself turns brown and half-caste.Įnglish was introduced in India with commercial objectives in view. When they went back they left their language behind – and half-castes. Conversions followed, to another way of life and on occasions to Christianity. Their colonies became vast markets for their textiles and their language. The Europeans came to trade, hung on to fight, intrigue and conquer, and stayed on to instruct. You could write it only in a language you had imbibed with mother’s milk.” “Yes, fiction, essays, articles, even pornography one could write in English, they said (though nothing like Punjabi for robust abuse). Keki Daruwalla on how he negotiates the ‘Lactatory’ and ‘Dreamy’ Schools of Criticism, the charge of being colonial and elitist – and that perennially tricky business of fashioning poetry. If being a poet is a fraught affair, being an Indian English poet is doubly fraught.

Muse of poetry