When I was in second grade, we had a disaster in our school. It was an international school, situated in the hills of South India, in a place completely surrounded by forests (and monkeys of course). A boarding school with discipline engraved on its students’ foreheads. But, some new students had joined and through them, new vocabulary words had slowly seeped into the whole school (“like tea from a teabag”). The headmistress had a heart attack everytime someone opened his mouth, teachers screamed much more often and wooden rulers took on their second and more violent nature! What were those very offensive words? Brace yourself- ‘yea’ and ‘like.’ In a world where answers required ‘yes, madam’, these words had quite the need to be censored. And so they were.
Needless to say, the f-word, d-word, s-word and the other list of alphabetical curses were completely absent from my childhood vocabulary. I first realized this lack in fifth grade, my first full year in the United States. My teacher had made me a “Safety” and it was my duty to walk through the lines of kids waiting for the late bus and make sure everyone was good and disciplined (cough, disciple in the RedWhiteandBlue Empire was a joke). Read the rest of this entry »
ഞാന് ഒരിക്കലും ഒരു നാട്ടിന്പുറത്ത് പോയിട്ടില്ല. നാട്ടിന്പുറത്തെ ഓണങ്ങള് കണ്ടിട്ടില്ല, കളികള് കളിച്ചിട്ടില്ല, പൂക്കളങ്ങള് ഉണ്ടാക്കിയിട്ടില്ല. എന്തിന്, നാട്ടിന്പുറം പോയിട്ട് കേരളത്തില് പോലും ഓണം ആഘോഷിചിട്ടില്ല.
What they said..