Ma & Pa Kettle Math

Ma & Pa Kettle's math tricks! Is 25/5= 5 or 14? Proof is here Excerpted From: Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm (1951)

LITERACY AUTOBIOGRAPHY

“I have my own language and it's high time I put a little of it out there.”- Paul Westerberg

I was born and brought up in India where 23 official and more than 200 unofficial languages are spoken all over the country. Now I think how spellbinding it would have been for me as a child to explore children literature in four different languages; Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, and English. My father had a transferable job, so we kept shifting from one state to another. This gave me the opportunity to learn new languages wherever we went. Though Hindi is the national language of India, English is considered to be the first language as medium of instruction in schools. The language holds academic value and permeates into daily life. Parents always want their children to learn English fluently so that they can be considered superior as well as modern in the economic and business world.

Some books that I still cherish since my childhood days are: Around the world in eighty days, City of joy, Oliver twist, Time machine, Treasure Island and Amar Chitra Katha (Hindi Folk tales). Hindi literature always fascinated me as it is a true representative of our cultural beliefs, traditions and age old customs. I always used to compare the writings in Hindi and English and found that hindi has phonetic script, i.e. Each letter in the Hindi script has a unique sound that it makes. So it is written in the same way as it is pronounced. Traditionally the structural differences between both languages have been attributed to the difference in word orders. During elementary school days, before speaking in English, my brain always used to translate Hindi sentences to English.

Reading and writing in English was a necessity and some how my whole childhood went reading and writing for academic purposes only. It was only after I reached middle school, I could develop the habit of leisure reading. During those years, as a, English reader I would rank myself 7 out of 10 in terms of fluency, comprehension and pronunciation. I liked reading aloud in the class and also while studying alone, until undergraduate years, I couldn’t read silently. Today also many times I prefer to be a oral reader, as I can comprehend the material only when I am reading it aloud. Also I have the habit of taking notes instead of highlighting important points in the book. While reading whenever I come across new words, more than knowing their meaning, I am interested in how these words are pronounced. During my college days, I developed a passion for reading Reader’s Digest (RD). I found it to be a good resource of increasing my vocabulary as well as gave me excellent ideas to write personal experiences.The influential impact of the magazine persuaded me to have a collection of RD’s from the year 1984 to 2000.

Learning how to write English alphabets in Kindergarten was one big task not for me but for my parents. They tried their best teaching me to write letters like J and D because I always wrote the mirror image of these two letters. During elementary school days, I often had trouble structuring sentences and had a tough time with grammar and punctuation. Education in India is text oriented as well as teacher oriented. So while framing answers, we simply wrote what was written in the text book or dictated by the teacher. It was only when we were given an essay assignment, we got the liberty to write our own thoughts and experiences. In 6th grade, I still remember, our class got an assignment where we had to complete a story. I found that task to be most challenging and interesting and wrote a wonderful story of a boy falling in love with an angel. As a child, I was greatly inspired by my father’s creative style of writing. He often gave me excellent suggestions of where I could improve while framing sentences. Kudos to him, he himself studied in gujarati medium till high school and during his college years developed a strong hold on English language and grammar. I would always remember his story of how he started speaking fluently in English. After starting his first job , he luckily found a great English teacher, his manager’s wife who was a Britisher.

It was later in college, I started writing about life, culture, happiness and many such philosophical topics in English. I am not a technical writer and feel that I cannot bring facts in my writings as I always like to reflect my emotional side. Surprisingly, I have tried expressing my thoughts by writing English poetry but I find writing poems in Hindi more apposite. I have realized that I can express myself well in writing rather than speaking and it is true for both languages. While I was preparing for MBA entrance exams in India, I came across a book on building vocabulary by Norman Lewis. The book was really helpful as I learnt how to recognize words like pyromaniac and pyrotechnician that come from greek root, ‘pyro’ meaning fire. It was really an efficient way of filling in words in my pool of vocabulary.

Coming to USA and starting graduate program in teaching have changed my thought process and maturity level to a great extent. Though my cultural roots are the same, I have changed opinions and that has influenced my writing as well. Earlier I used to have my own diary of moments and experiences that has now been transformed to my own blog. As an amateur writer, my next step is to improve my writing skills, explore the creative writing style and to refine my language. I am searching for resources that can help me to frame one sentence in various ways and secondly how can I add humor and satire in my writings.

I have developed varied reading interests right from fiction to articles on marketing (my previous profession) and education. Recently I read two Indian novels; ‘A fine balance’ and ‘family matters’, both written by Rohinton Mistry. Both books deal with true human spirit and struggles that man faces each and every moment in the city by the sea, Mumbai. Both books have made me more compassionate and close to my country and people. I always look for a book companion who can recommend me books according to my likings and I am proud to have one such person in my life; he is my brother. Earlier I used to think passionate readers are the result of developing an interest in reading at an early age. But my myth was broken when I saw my brother, who started engaging himself in forming such interest during his college years. Before that I always found my brother reading only his text books till high school.

I would temporarily bring my literacy autobiography to a close by doodling words by Paul Sweeney, “You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend.” I hope to have the same feeling, next time when I get a chance to read a good book again.