Bewitching Blond and Love and Romance

Let me begin with a polite warning! Anyone expecting to read a steamyand mushy  romance in this column is advised to look for it elsewhere! This is just the musings of a naive bewildered soul whose soul aim was to speak English fluently. 

  You see, I have this peculiar problem. Ask me to write in English and I am ever ready to fill reams  in English so grammatically accurate that it would've warmed  the very cockles of the late lamented Mr Wren and Mr Martin!

 But ask me to speak a few lines in English and I promptly transform myself into a medical mystery! After all, how many doctors anywhere in the world would've had to treat a patient who simultaneously displays signs of a cardiac arrest, near total paralysis, migraine and labour pains thrown in for good measure?! These are exactly the symptoms I display whenever I have tried speaking in this language! I decided to do something about it and learn simple spoken English. 

  I was to learn that learning simple spoken English wasn't simple at all!

 

  I could've simply employed a private tutor but the really good ones don't come cheap! And having been cursed with a hospitable streak of mind, I'd have plied them with tea and samosas  and biscuits. All this would've totaled to a tidy little fortune that I could ill afford. 

   A good Samaritan stepped in and advised me to join any one of the innumerable spoken English 'classes', 'academies' or 'institutes' that have cropped up all over the landscape like so many toadstools after a thunderstorm! And it was here that my sanity threatened to desert me! Along with my desire to speak in English!

  I began paying more attention to the hoardings and 'wall posters' on the roads and jotting down their phone numbers and addresses. No sense in commuting about a hundred kilometres one way just to speak English, was there? I pruned the alarmingly long list to manageable proportions. Nothing like trying out the ones in your immediate friendly neighbourhood, eh? 

  There was this establishment just half a kilometre from my residence and they'd plastered the neighbourhood with colourful propaganda material. There was one such poster quite clearly visible from my drawing room window. It showed a lovely young damsel with a broad smile. A smile brought on perhaps by the fluency in English she had gained after a fruitful course at this academy. That she was a blue eyed blonde with the vital statistics normally seen on the TV screen featuring American programmes didn't seem vital to me at the time.  

  I gingerly dialled the number and waited with bated breath. A male voice cheerily wished me 'good morning'. 

In whatever halting English I could muster, I too greeted him. He followed this with a ''How may I help you, dude?" I nearly dropped my mobile phone! 

 The English I heard could only have been spoken by one person I could think of!  It was pure Texan gibberish to my uninitiated ears!  Nah! Can't be HE!  I mean it's hardly impossible to get wrong numbers and all that.  But to get inadvertently connected to George W Bush?!  I was tempted to scream at him for the misery he has caused in Iraq in his futile quest of the elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction! Fortunately, saner sense prevailed and I very hesitantly requested 'the voice' to speak alowly and in an accent that I could relate to. The gasp at the other end was clearly audible to me! 

 In a shocked tone, he spoke at a snail's pace. But the accent stayed in place. He gently reminded me that his academy specialised in American English ONLY! He also, not-so-gently this time, asked me to have a good look at the posters displayed all over the neighbourhood. 

 I did so and cursed myself for not reading the 'American English ONLY' part of the poster. I also roundly cursed that blond bombshell for distracting my attention and wasting not just my time but that of 'George W Bush' in the bargain! 

 For a month after that, I kept getting regular calls from Bush asking if I was still interested in speaking English like an American.  I detected a faint note of desperation in the Texan drawl and this aroused the dormant James Bond in me. Never mind if Mr Bond was as British as a London taxi!

 Discreet enquiries revealed that Mr Bush had been largely unsuccessful in luring unsuspecting souls to speak like the way he does! The classrooms were devoid of any students. I would have suggested using the rooms to conduct embroidery classes for the good ladies of my neighbourhood but the thought that only American embroidery would be taught discouraged me from calling Mr Bush ever again. 

   Meanwhile, cruel and uncaring Mother Nature has taken a toll on that poor blonde! No longer beguiling, she looks like something your cat brought in.........

                                                                       THE END..................but not quite the end!  Await LOVE AND ROMANCE that happened in Veta--a love for the language, a love that would stay with me forever.

Vetalker Mani Menon