WRIITEN OFF, SIGNING OUT....

Here's to everyone who wonders why I have gone off the radar yet again. No, I am not being extradited for writing dubious stories on Dubai. I am learning my alphabets backwards. From D it is now C for Cairo and perhaps a cruise along the Nile (Only if I behave myself I have been warned!). Meanwhile it is more than alphabets that I have to master… and I am not just referring to hieroglyphics.

“Your article ‘Que Sera Dubai’ was nice but marred by mistakes,” I was told by a well meaning friend of mine recently. “What was nice about the article?” I asked nervously trying to salvage my self- respect. “Well err…”???

Apparently the ‘errors’ were so smack-in-the-face they took away the focus from the content. Now I was feeling jelly-kneed. I needed to see a shrink before I could look for a copy of “Editing for dummies.” My self esteem was fast evaporating. “But it wasn’t a blog. That article went through the copy desk before it came out in print. I am surprised you found so many mistakes,” I risked speaking up in self defense. And so came the final blow!“It is not your fault. It is your vernacular English and the sentence construction. That’s the problem.”

My vernacular English with its structural defects is what stood between me and my destiny I was given to understand. I will never be a prolific writer unless I got my p’s and q’s in place. I will remain the poor second rung slogger who’s epitaph will be, “She also ran,” in bold. My writing career which hadn’t looked bleak from any angle till now was suddenly hanging from a thin thread. My despair was threatening to turn into a full-fledged PMS depression (and I hadn’t even got over my monthly misery).

I had to quickly review the situation objectively and decide on a concrete POA.

Vernacular English! Hmmm! I think I understood that. Thinking in a regional language and writing in English. Was I thus challenged? I had not the faintest idea. Ok so I was a bloody native! (You have heard that one haven’t you? “If you can’t speak English like English then you are bloody native and if you can’t speak Hindustani like an Indian then you are a bloody Yankee”).

But how were my readers reacting? I was more concerned about that. Was my writing something like Indian Chinese – that extra chili, extra masala crispy noodle you got to eat only at the roadside? Most of my friends won’t touch it with a barge pole - but even at the cost of digressing here let me tell you it works wonders. It will burn your toilet paper at first but it is a sure detox – a very indigenous Atkins or a GM diet!

So was I this disgraceful, discreditable floppy variety or the more inscrutably humorous Lola Kutty variety? I had to make sure if people were baulking/laughing at what I was writing, it was for the right reasons. I could always leverage my style as a unique Bong way of putting things across (a bit heart burning at first but great for the soul).

Is it too late to seek redemption from this great curse? I am wondering. Shall I carry this to my grave now? Why oh why as I born a Bong and not a Brit? It was bad enough that my rosogolla eating clan kept me blissfully unaware of the long vowels and short vowels till I was big enough to understand that some words could have a ‘vary’ different meaning with a slight shift in stress. “Leave and let leave?” My primary school teachers (from the south) added to the woe. I was soon ‘eating’ not only my words but also the some ‘yehhllo’ solution over the Bunsen burner. I barely managed to stumble through them quite ‘seeck’ in the head when in one agonising moment I took up the parchment and quill. Some of the shakles dissappeared instantly. Writing I decided was a far easier option for communication.

But alas not anymore! The curse of curried upbringing strikes yet again. I have very few choices left. Live in ignominy or sign up for a sign writing course (Yes sign languages are written languages used by over 40 different countries).

Now the question is which one should it be – The American or the English? Or to be on the safe side should I just stick to Egyptian hieroglyphics?