A Talking Library and Butler English

The Talking Library and Butler English

In sizing up a place to retire for all or part of the year, the list of necessities runs something like this:

Inexpensive, a place where I can live on less than a thousand a month.

Good Climate, no more falling down in snow ruts. No broiling as I did in Goa.

Perhaps not everyone will speak English but there will be those who can serve as contacts in case of some need or other. I don’t mind learning another language but the place where I’m stopping off will really have to be special for me to invest that kind of energy. To resurrect my Spanish, is not out of the question.

A town or if it turns out to be a city, must have a neighborhood where I can get to know people.

A place where learning is in evidence, a college town will do.

A banking system that works.

Access to a good hospital.

And a library.

Running down the list, Kodaikanal’s virtues put it on the short list. It is inexpensive. The longer I live here, the more I appreciate the climate. It snows in the Himalayas. Tamil is the language but every week I meet someone else who is proficient in English. While the “town” is twice the size of Sitka, it’s scattered and only becomes a little crowded on Market Day (Sunday.) To date, I’ve made little contact (positive anyway) with an educational institute. That is partly my fault. And it could be that on this side of the world, schools from K. to Ph.D. are off limits to the public. There is a hospital here. And that leaves the library. The Tamil library is open for a few hours for about five or six days a week. The English portion of the library is wanting. There is a school library at Kodaikanal International School run by a professional librarian(s) but it is not open to nonmembers of that enclave. Finally there is KMU. The K is for the town, the U is for Union, and I’ve already forgotten what the M is for. I remember now, “Mission.” Well, that sounds better than “Fellowship.”

This library was started by missionaries during the Raj and has been collecting books in English that travelers, expatriates, and anybody else decides to leave behind. Missionaries contributed religious books by the bushel. Many of those books were sold off to allow for more room. The bad news about the library is that it is open only twice a week. The good news is that it does have encyclopedias and dictionaries and other reference books to keep you straight when you don’t have access to Google and Wikipedia. But the great news was told to me by Margaret, “This is a talking library.” In Sitka the children have their own glassed in corner of the library, where the noise produced by their enthusiasm does not interfere with the adults’ trains of thought. At KMU there are no children. The “kid” is the drama teacher from KIS and she may retire sometime in the next ten years. We don’t have to stay behind glass and we are invited to talk about anything that comes to mind.

Grace comes to mind. She is about to celebrate her 100th birthday. She got her first job out of school during the War (World War II) as a journalist. Her first story was about the removal of the children of London to the safety of the countryside. Grace walks with a cane and sometimes topples over. When she’s talking to you, she needs no cane and there is no stumbling.

Mark, her son, has run a construction company in the U.S. but will more than likely recall his work as a director of Earth Day activities. He is seriously interested in the arts and he and I have something else in common. We like to talk, usually at the same time. Mark has been good enough to read a couple of my stories and comment on them. He has bought a piece of property out of town and intends to build. The country is wild and he occasionally has earlier tenants drop by, elephants. His other project at the moment is to renounce his British citizenship, the country of his birth, and to carry an Indian passport. He has Vikings on both sides of his family, no Indians, has a Johnny Carson accent, but he is tired of being a foreigner. India is his home.

Dudley is an accountant from Great Britain, who while being an ethnic Indian, has “come home” to get better acquainted with his roots, buy property, raise a little coffee, and retire.

Clarence is a consultant on South Asia. He’s taught and been an advisor on projects. He invited me up to his four acres and his large, very pretty house where he and his wife and family live. He seems to enjoy building almost as much as he does his studies.

Like Margaret, most the people who drop in for a visit, have some connection with KIS on whose land the library is located. It seems that many people take a look at where they are in the world and remember “Kodai” where they once were, either as students or teachers and come back to where the eucalyptus reaches for the sky. It is a congenial and well educated group and an easy bunch of people with whom to relax and visit.

People talk about their properties since building is either going on or they are about to begin. We talk about literature and the arts as well. Then we always talk about where we live and what problems arise. Sometime it is the requirement that all long term residents (not citizens) must leave India for a day every six months. I don’t believe that these seasonal absents will enter my short list of problems that irritate me. Nothing like highway/urban roads and drivers, electrical power failures, and always the rubbish.

One day I asked what the meaning of “butter English” was. Foreheads wrinkled and I tried again, “Butler English.” What had happened was that a young man called Nagaraja had knocked on my door one evening and wanted me to tell him what I thought of his plan to immigrate to Australia. I was still dressed and was reading so I told him to go back to his room and I’d come talk to him.

Once settled he asked me what I thought of his paying an agent $2,500 U.S. to place him in a job in Australia. A person working in a call center in Bangalore makes about $10,000 per annum and is considered middle class. I doubt if Naga makes half that. I told him with all certainty that he would be scammed, that he could fulfill any requirement as for immigration himself and with that kind of money, he could have plenty of change left over to begin his life in his new country. I outlined a plan that I would use were I he and he listened. I tell anyone interested in entering country that language is the first requirement. While I thought I could understand him pretty well, he would not be able to hold a job where skill with English was a major concern. He has been trained in the care and feeding of ATM machines. He travels around for a large bank here and has a year and a half experience to his credit. It would not surprise me that somewhere in Australia, they might need this skill and there is not much of a language requirement.

We had another conversation a few days later and I saw a different side of him, a very bitter side. No one likes to take the responsibilities for their short comings but he said that upon entering school, he was asked his caste. He told them and was enrolled in a class with low expectation. And with a third rate education, whatever English he learned was of low quality. He told me that they had been taught “butter English.” What he meant to say and what I was supposed to hear was “Butler English,” a grade of the language which would serve to get him a job as a house servant. The “l” was missing.

This was a pronunciation and a vocabulary clear enough for a memsahib to understand. But then when one Indian speaks Butler English to another, it becomes a language with its own grammar and pronunciation. I’ve said several times that, “I am from Ah-med-ee-cah.” I’m told by one member of the Talking Library that my problem in understanding Indians is that they speak Reserve Standard (BBC English) rather than the English I’m more accustomed to, the American pronunciations. The Queen will not say, “ower” for “over” nor will anyone in the U.K. except another Indian. Indian English is an animal in its own right. While I have no difficulty in someone beginning a new language, if the purpose of the new language is to communicate with the older one, then one has to pronounce the letter “v” like the older one or the older one has to recognize that “lower” is really “lover.” And then there is the problem of those words ending in “ed.” Have you hug –ed or kiss-ed your kid today? I make no defense for the screwed up spelling system we have. We are second only to the French in dumfounding the foreigner but Butler English needs work.

When I brought the Butler English matter up at the library, it was if I’d poured water on a hot stove top. Lots of steam and skidding droplets going in all directions. Everybody seemed to agree that since South Korea decided 50 years ago to spend 10% of GNP on education that today South Korea reaps the benefits in a high standard of living. By the way in Butler English the word “percent” and is pronounced something like “person.” Try substituting “person” for “percent” and see what your listener thinks. India opted for half the “person” of South Korea and today public schools in India teach neither the local language nor the “foreign” language well. I put it in quotes because that foreign language has lived in India for 200 years…not only among the butlers but prime ministers.

On one side of the stove the argument went that since the language of the land and its literature is Tamil then the effort should be made in that direction. On the other side of the stove the idea went that if the students were to go on into any technology, the emphasis should be on English since that is the language of medicine, the example given.

When talking one on one, the lines of reasoning seem easier to follow. And since I’m the new boy on the block, knowing these people is great value. They’ve been thinking “Indian” in some cases as long as I’ve been thinking “Alaskan.” Their advice is very helpful.

The library is open Wednesday and Saturday from 11 AM to 1 PM. Margaret and Roy reshelf the books. Somebody has to do it. But the couch and easy chairs are occupied by people talking about what’s on their minds today. Ideas are traded; information is swapped. Those are two hours that pass much too quickly.

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