0107hrs
Had a long day..was caught in the rain..had chores to do..nearly caught my hair on fire...too engrossed in peering into what's cooking IN the pot..failed to notice the flames licking out beneath the pot..narrowly escaped doing an MJ!
Then my cousin from India popped in for a visit and since no one else was at home besides my cousin Clif..I kept him entertained till my parents got home..I tried my best to come up with interesting topics to talk about..but I soon realised that my Singapore version of Malayalam was reli way inferior to the authentic Kerala version spouting from his lips..its weird coz I prided myself on being fairly GOOD in my mother tongue LoL yet I was forced to stutter my way thru the conversation and there were several times I started a sentence in Malayalam then would meander into some form of Tamil n weakly trail off in English....
Oh well..another odd thing about me..if u happen to know me in person u may or may not have noticed this but...I studied and understand Tamil well yet I'm unable to communicate in the language..I guess u could blame my Tamil teachers partially..they allowed me to escape with answering in english for the entire 6yrs in Primary school!!It didnt help that I had no one else to push me to speak the language since we all spoke in English or Malayalam at home.
When I went to secondary school..I suffered BIG time.My tamil teacher..whom I very seriously am nursing a grudge against till today..went ALL THE WAY out to make trouble for me.She assumed my reluctance to communicate in Tamil as some form of arrogance..and she picked on me quite a bit.It made me sad..coz I felt it was so unfair of her to not understand..besides the communication bit,my reading and writing skills were in fact sometimes better than my tamil speaking friends.Sigh.I was so lucky to have had my besties next to me..if not for their encouragement I think I would have murdered that old bat!
thankfully my Tamil teacher in upper Sec was cool Mr.Veerasingham..NOW that's a fine teacher.He didnt have to raise his voice or bang tables to get our attention.A flick of his finger and someone would run to clear the board.A wave of his hand and we'd open our books.LoL..
along the way my buddies spoke in Tamil and I understood them perfectly if they went along at a decent pace..and well..thats the way it has been..till today my friends speak to me in their mother tongue and I answer in English..in fact the only people who are stunned by this are the people who overhear our conversations..LoL coz all they hear is one voice in English and one voice in Tamil! no connection whatsoever!Well I could go on and on ..but let me tell u this..I don't regret the fact that I took up Tamil as a second language.
When I was in school I used to ask my mum why she didn't choose Malay or Mandarin instead as most of my cousins did..but later I realised it wasn't too bad at all.I enjoy being able to understand Tamil AND Malayalam..
So for the next idiot who comes up to me and starts lecturing me about not being able to speak Tamil even though I'm an Indian( u know who u are)..please remember..I am an Indian and yes I do know how to speak in my mother tongue which is Malayalam..I can't communicate in Tamil much but that doesn't mean I don't try..how many languages do YOU know besides your own?Not much rite?So..please..don't make me go on a loooong rant like this again..I know myself very well indeed..I do not need your approval to live my life.
Tsk Tsk.
This is me,Patricia