Learning English at 29

Every day when on my morning walk, I stopped in the middle of the walk to collect my daily dose of betel leaf. The betel leaf seller Naresh, a physically challenged man of twenty nine, was cheerful and sweet. He came to his wood cabin on a wheelchair. After our bonding had developed to a commendable level, I extracted all the details of his family background and personal life.

He had to struggle through hard days because he had become orphaned early in life. Someone took pity on him and brought him to Bhubaneswar to find him a source of income. After a year of futile job search, he began to sell betel leaf, tea and cigarettes. Very soon his business thrived and he married a girl, a florist's daughter. His wife too limped a little.

One morning when my legs were hurting from a long walk, I sat down on a bench he had placed for people. I came to know that he was a class eight dropout. He couldn't continue his schooling because there was none to support him.

I said, "Which subject did you like the most at school. . "

He said, "I liked all the subjects. . But I wanted to learn English. "

I thought he was saying so to impress me. He knew I taught people English for a living. Without any sense of sincerity, I said to him, "Will you learn English if I teach you? I will teach you for free. I can give you an hour a week. . "

He didn't say anything. I also didn't discuss the topic any further.

The next evening around 8 in the evening, he called me and expressed his yearning to learn English. I was glad to know that he was really interested in learning English.

I met him the next morning and offered him a copy of my short story collection "If Winter Comes. . . . " He couldn't pronounce the title of the book properly. He didn't know what the word "Winter" meant. . . ! I was shocked but I went down the memory lane and recalled how I had to struggle hard to learn English when I resumed my studies after three years. Words like apple, banana, orange, coffee were exasperatingly elusive. I had to write each of them on the cement floor 10 to 20 times to remember their spellings and meanings. I told him to buy an English to Odia dictionary in which pronunciations were written in Odia besides their meanings.

He said, "Sir what to do with the book? "

"It's a collection of short stories I wrote a very long time back. Your task is to write the meaning and pronunciation of each and every word you don't know. It may take you a lot of time. Don't bother about that. ."

I enquired about the task almost every day. He would invariably say, " Sir,I am working."

When alone in the cabin, he would tell me the meanings of words. I would often rectify his faulty pronunciations.

I have taught many students and some of them had displayed remarkable interest in learning English. But this man of twenty nine outshone them all. I was so overwhelmed with joy that I went to his house and gave him four or five classes every month. The amount of homework he was doing on his own was startling. I had special sympathies with him because I too was a class eight dropout. I had to take my bachelor degree at the age of twenty four and when I left university I was twenty six. A time came when I realised that going to his house and teaching him was superfluous. His wife wondered what would be the results of her husband studying English at the age of twenty nine. . . . In a single year he managed to remember eighty percent of the English words. That gave him tremendous confidence to march ahead.

Everyone knew Naresh was a tea seller. Could he teach like a school teacher. . . ?Even my recommendation didn't bear any fruit. I was shocked and angry. He started teaching children studying in government schools. Their parents were poor and they believed him and in his sincerity. After three years when I opened BECKON CREATIVE WRITING ACADEMY he was engaged there. I couldn't pay him much but he was pleased. When he started teaching the small classes, no parents dared to call him by his former name "Naria. " Instead they addressed him as "Sir. "

He knew a whole lot of things on the internet and found out some obscure sources of income I can't understand at all. He and his wife ran their betel leaf shop as before.

Even now I wonder at the turning point in my life but I wonder still more at the success of a handicapped man who started learning English at the age of 29!