The language of stories

I grew up in a small town and went to a Hindi medium school for my foundational years of learning, studying mostly in my native language. Later when I moved to the big city, where convents, English medium was the standard, I lagged behind in my English delivery. 

Most of my childhood, people made fun of my English usage and pronunciation- typical left over of British colonialism where English means education and culture or even class. Growing up in a house devoid of books I gorged on comics books and started reading ‘proper’ books much later. I was behind my contemporaries on fairy tales which I only read at a friends place and Enid Blyton in school library as a teenager which most kids read much earlier and even got over by teens. So when I did get the proper books the words picked up were pronounced as written and not as they should be. Which only got more difficult in the Anglophile world around me in metro cities. 

Only after almost 20 years of reading and 100s of books, I can confidently say I have a command over English language despite the pronunciation mistakes I make till now and am still afraid to show my blogs, or short stories to others who would judge and correct my grammar missing the essence and emotions behind my written words. 

I know as a reader how detestable it is to read a badly written work or full of grammatical errors. However, I empathize with people who want to tell stories despite their limited command over language. People need to understand that English is not the first language for many in my part of world. I categorically read books in Hindi or Punjabi, the other two languages I can read in to normalize reading non English literature and also appreciate some good work and authors in these languages, as a lot is lost in translations just like pronunciations. 

So here I am excited about finding a new word on the first page of the book I started reading 

Just like the word, I made a fuss when reading at first, marking the words or lines I like, referring a dictionary, carrying pocket dictionaries where I went. Because there is nothing that we can’t conquer and the ridicule only fuels my passion to be better at writing and even be a writer some day who will be known for the stories and language will just be a medium.