WILD FLOWERS ALONG THE WAY
“You
smiled and talked to me of nothing;
and
I felt that, for this, I had been waiting long.”
Rabindranath
Tagore
I
write these blog posts, almost daily. I am very fond of reading good Prose and Poetry.
The new words, idioms and phrases, figures of speech, proverbs and quotations
simply fascinate me. In fact, I have written, edited and published over thirty books
on behalf of the Dawn Club. Some of these books have been about improving one’s
English.
But, then, it looks
very strange to me, when I reflect on my own situation in school and college
while learning Prose and Poetry… I wasn’t good in both. The first time I
started loving good English literature was in my twelfth standard. There was a Jesuit
priest to teach us English classics, such as Shakespeare’s famous Plays and
Poetry. It was the first time, that I woke up to the beauty of Old English…
King Lear, Julius Caesar, Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet and so on. We,
also, had good English teachers to teach us classics of Leo Tolstoy and O. Henry.
I still remember Kalidasa’s sublime play ‘Shakuntala’… There was ‘Robinson
Crusoe’ and there were plenty of Poems along. Even the Professor, who taught us
Kannada literature in F.Y. B. Com., fired our imaginations with the works of
well-known Kannada poets, such as Kuvempu and Bendre.
That said, I
wish to confess, here, that my fascination for the English subject – why I
began to write Prose and Poetry in English – did not come from my excellence in
it during my school and college days… I was nowhere near that!
So, what made me
write?
It’s my burning
desire to beat my low self-esteem by becoming a fine teacher like my idol,
Prof. B.S. Raman. Prof. Raman, by the way, did not teach us English… He taught
us the typical Commerce subjects, such as Accountancy, Costing and Taxation. He
was a great teacher and author of books on almost all Commerce subjects… I
desired to become like him. But, to reach there, I had to cross two major hurdles:
My poor English (My medium was vernacular), and my Stage Fear. The desire was
so strong, and achieving it was so important to me, that I got into work right
away in my F.Y. B. Com days… I started teaching some of my classmates who were
weaker than me in Accounting subjects, just out of interest and to feel good
about myself. To improve my English, I started writing short ‘notes’ of a few
lines. As I was too shy and scared to speak in public, I found it comfortable
to express myself freely through my ‘private notes’… When I showed them to my close
friends, they said, “Beautiful’!
That’s was to
open these floodgates! The gushing hasn’t stopped since then… and, it won’t for
rest of my life!
Today,
seeing me write like this, if you wonder where it’s coming from, I simply want
to repeat this: from my restless desire to feel confident by being able to
express. English, incidentally, became a medium to express… It was not the end.
After decades of
teaching, writing, training etc., all that I claim to have achieved is - this ability,
confidence and comfort of expressing myself…
I do not see
myself as a writer of Prose or Poetry… I just see myself as a starry-eyed kid
fascinated by the wild flowers along his way… The kid stops to smell them, sing
glory about them… The kid sees the extra-ordinary in the ordinary… and, yes, the
kid loves to tell fresh stories about them… every day!
If that’s Prose
or Poetry, so be it.
GERALD D’CUNHA
Pic's. pixabay:
Video: Rahat Indori/GIFLIF - Great Indian Film & Lit Fest.
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