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Writer's pictureKuzhali Manickavel

is englishbullying in modern india like hipster racism without the hipsters and the racism

Updated: Aug 7, 2020

This blog post title is something I would like to talk about a little later. First, did I mention I have an echapbook out called ‘Eating Sugar, Telling Lies’ which you can buy and enjai like anything? Did I also mention that my collection with the tediously long title is now available as an ebook so you don’t have to wander all over the countryside trying to find it? Didn’t mention? Ok so I have mentioned it now.


Now can we talk about the slew of shirtless dudes that have apparently bombarded the Bollywood and just ruined everything? I feel like peeps were complaining about this when I was in college also and that was a REALLY long time ago yougaiz. Maybe this is one of those things that people like to periodically bemoan, like the death of the short story, which apparently has been going on dying for many years now. Anywaiz, I believe some people are very upset about said slew of shirtless dudes because I think so in Bollywood only the women are supposed to appear in various stages of undress. In this way, Bollywood is very similar to Hollywood, thus proving that there is unity in the diversity. Or maybe peeps are upset because shirtless fellows are against Indian culture. Maybe like the feminism and the gayness, shirtless dudes are one another Western crapnonsense nuisance. This of course would explain why in our great Indian epics we have great Indian man hero type people fitted out in shirts which covered their modesty and their bellybuttons.  This is in marked contrast to certain women of low character who always displayed their bellybutton as a way of seducing great Indian man hero type people. 


Anyway then what happened means I watched a television commercial the other day. From what I remember of it, a man could not find his socks and his wifelet was pissed off because she had to come and find his socks for him. Then the teevee showed us a shot of some Bran Flakes (I think), which tells us that one of these illustrious individuals was constipated. Someone told me that Indians don’t get constipated because apparently that’s something that only happens to white people. And here we are in 2011 watching an Indian commercial for Bran Flakes. This is called progress of the globalization. Anyhoo, because I am just a silly old woman with a silly old uterus, I thought the constipated individual was the man, who was possibly so backed up that he could not even find his own socks anymore. But nay- twas the woman who was irregular. Her irregularity caused the irregular behavior of wondering why a grown man can’t find his own socks. Thankfully by the end of the commercial, the woman had her Bran Flakes and the snail was on the thorn, morning was at seven and the man had a woman to cheerfully find his socks for him. I’m really glad that commercial ended well because I was really worried about the socks!!11 Who would find them?!!11 Would they be lost forever?!11 So much drama yougaiz. 


Now, I would like to talk about this blog post’s title. This is something that occurred to me a while back, when I noticed that an Indian name was trending on Twitter. The Indian name belonged to an Indian dude who had an Indian blog that was filled with Indian English and it was just the funniest thing evarevar yougaiz. The trending seemed to be largely made up of that unique form of EnglishBullying that we are so fond of doing in our onenumber country to anyone who has the audacity to use Indian English like it is a language that people actually speak in India or something. This bullying is not really bullying yougaiz because apparently it helps the other person to ‘see his mistake and correct his ‘bad’ English’. So it’s kinda like the mean twin of the Benevolent English Despotism I once blogged about before. And while they may appear to be different, I feel they are both are coming from the same family only. 


The bullying in itself was not very interesting but it was done in that slightly nervous, loud and defensive way that makes EnglishBullying so adorbs- like hipster racism joketype things, it is extremely important to go along and laugh at everything because if you don’t, you either don’t have a sense of humor or you are pretending to be American or you are a terrorist or you have your period or something. I myself did not laugh because I did not really see what we were supposed to be laughing at. On the one hand, we had this individual who had offended Mother India by having a blog filled with Indian English which apparently is “the horrible English”. And then we had peeps tweeting things like ‘‘god please save d India from such fellows who use d English in such a manner jai hind!’ I found all this very similar to a forward I received some time back, which snarked about the similar horrible English one finds on certain shaadi.com profiles. This consisted of taking a profile that was written in “bad” English with “bad” grammar and then following it with a comment that read something like ‘next time you plz ask the help in framing sentence to save us from you’re painful grammar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’.


I’m guessing that the English used by one party is “better” than that used by the other, although I am unable to see just where the betterment is. I am also unable to understand why it is so important to jump up and down and frantically scream about “the horrible Englishes” or if people are aware of what it looks like when you frantically scream about “the horrible Englishes'” while using phrases like “the horrible Englishes”. Admittedly, I probably shouldn’t be talking about this at all. Not only is this blog is riddled with bad English and grammar, I have no qualms in admitting that not only was I student of Government Girls Higher Secondary School in the Tamil Nadu, I also failed English in the same. I also failed English in Canada although there it was called “Language Arts”. Point being that I have failed English in First and Third World countries so that’s probably why I cannot discern the subtle but incredibly important differences which makes one of these Englishes moar better than the other.


Instead, I will end all this with this poem by Nissim Ezekiel. I like this poem very much but perhaps this man is somewhat to blame for the goingon population explosion of that awful thing called Indian English because blatantly he has written poem using the same. Hopefully the EnglishBullyingBrigade will be able to put this man and his horrible English in his place soon and save the India from such fellows.


The Professor

Remember me? I am Professor Sheth.

 Once I taught you geography. Now

 I am retired, though my health is good.

 My wife died some years back.

 By God’s grace, all my children

 Are well settled in life.

 One is Sales Manager,

 One is Bank Manager,

 Both have cars.

 Other also doing well, though not so well.

 Every family must have black sheep.

 Sarala and Tarala are married,

 Their husbands are very nice boys.

 You won’t believe but I have eleven grandchildren.

 How many issues you have? Three?

 That is good. These are days of family planning.

 I am not against. We have to change with times.

 Whole world is changing. In India also

 We are keeping up. Our progress is progressing.

 Old values are going, new values are coming.

 Everything is happening with leaps and bounds.

 I am going out rarely, now and then

 Only, this is price of old age

 But my health is O.K. Usual aches and pains.

 No diabetes, no blood pressure, no heart attack.

 This is because of sound habits in youth.

 How is your health keeping?

 Nicely? I am happy for that.

 This year I am sixty-nine

 and hope to score a century.

 You were so thin, like stick,

 Now you are man of weight and consequence.

 That is good joke.

 If you are coming again this side by chance,

 Visit please my humble residence also.

 I am living just on opposite house’s backside.


– By Nissim Ezekial, stolen from here

baiyougaiz

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