I still dont know what I am going to write about, so I think I will categorize the blog after I am done with it. The readers of course wont know the difference; when they read it will all come smooth and sequential, and they will never be able to glimpse the confusion and the conflicts and the backtracking and revisiting that happens in the mind of a writer:) Now that I sound like a passionately talented writer, let me continue with finding a topic to write about.

I can talk about London and England, or the UK, but that topic is too vast and general to really expand upon, so I will write about my problem in understanding UK English instead. Hopefully, like a classic piece of writing, this will also give you a glimpse of daily life of a housewife immigrant from India, and a deeper insight into life in general, and all this through her (or my) difficulties in following British accent. Now that I am totally self-conscious of my motivations obvious and hidden, I dont feel like really pursuing this line of thought, but for the sake of a potentially loyal audience, I shall..

Yesterday I went to return the few books in the library that I didnt want to renew. These were, a book by PGWodehouse, about mr.mulliner, which i didnt find very funny, and that made me wonder if its because ive lost my sense of humour, or pgw hadnt found his by the time he wrote his book. second was east west by salman rushdie, a collection of short stories, you know 3 from east, 3 from west and 3 from east meets west. I read 2 stories from east, 1 from east west and somehow didnt feel like really reading the entire book, though they were just harmless short stories not consuming too many pages of a book! atleast nothing compared to novels! 2 other books that I returned, I actually read cover to cover. The first was life of PI, and that one was really a struggle, probably as much as pi's to reach ashore and tame the tiger and all that rot. though recently a few sentences popped in my head randomly, and they made me glad for having read the book and not giving up. One was how fear and reason oppose each other - reason reasons and is rational, but fear creeps and takes over and really tears reason to shreds when it has no real logical basis to do so. a very negative, destructive, rotting force.. something like that. I liked that! he expressed it very well. yann martel, who is he, and why is he so interested in indfia and pondicherry, and are there south indians with last names of patel? I know there are with the surname of desai, because the topper of our school was a desai and he wasnt guju. (and though he was a good person we all loved to hate him:) atleast i did, even though he was much better than most boys of our batch. i hate giving so much space to memories of mahesh desai. sickkkk....)

Well, anyway, and another was how he changed his story for the sake of the owners of the ship that sunk and cast him in sea in the company of a giraffe, a zebra, a gorilla, a hyena, 2 or 3 mice and a tiger. each changed into a human, the gorilla was his mother, the hyena was the french cook who was quite inhuman, and others i dont remember, and the main tiger was he himself. i was rather surprised by this, and i wondered if this was the true version, and I didnt want to think too much about it, because it didnt matter. The important thing is he did the dirty work himself (the author) and clearly matched an animal with a human and saved us the deep probings and meaning extractions. for i wouldnt have got it if he hadnt spelled it out.

the other book i read completely was better.. which was it? yes, around the world in eighty days by jules verne. did you know jules verne wrote in french? i always thought his were children's books, and though the story would appeal to children, adults would enjoy it too. and the healthy sarcasm is aimed at the adults, one would presume the children of those days (1872) and hopefully even today are far too naive to start understanding and appreciating sarcasm at the age when they are regarded as kids. Anyway, adults definitely would enjoy sarcasm more, once they have gathered ample bitterness and biases and experienced the ups and the DOWNS that make them hardened and opinionated and more prone to enjoying negativities in others. and themselves too, having totally given up on thoughts of change for the better and self-improvement and all those positives. Ok, the reason I did feel tempted to pick this book from the library was because of a book on great indian railway stories edited by ruskin bond, which contains around 15 or 20 stories by various authors connected to indian railways of pre and post independence in some way. It is a very nice book, with stories by victor banerjee, satyajit ray, ruskin bond, and excerpt from jules verne's around in 80, it contained an interesting part when his servant passerpartout gets into trouble in a malabar hill temple and they board the train from bombay to go to calcutta, and the railway line is incomplete at some point in mp to some other pt before allahbad and they are stranded wondering what to do next. this part really whetted my curiousity and i wondered what must have happenned subsequently, having forgotten the entire story when i last read it in a pocket book edition as a small child. so i took this book and i really dont regret it. i remember not enjoying it too much as a child, but this version, complete, and for adults(!) was a delight. it was fun, and being in london now, it was even more interesting, since once tends to associate with the setting of the novel once one is in that setting, though nothing else may be identifiable except the general location.

ok, having read a lot of 'English' (!) books, and being generally comfortable in English, I didnt expect to be so blank when hearing Britishers speak English. But though they speak more slowly than Americans, and not as twistily, I cant get what they speak. Its either my ears, I dont hear them, very soft spoken lot, or its just that Im not used to hearing proper English face to face. I mean I have and do watch TV, BBC, and many English shows made in england too, and I dont seem to have a problem following them. But I faced the problem with my midwife from NHS, from receptionists in NHS hospitals, from the librarian who was softly telling me to pass the books so that I could return them and now I am quite scared of my abilities or their limitations, and wonder if lesser literate (!) and global (!) people face similar or larger problems. I have lived and travelled in parts of the world and that experience isnt helping me hear better. And I feel sympathy for the women who get married to an NRI and come to a foreign country, and are suddenly confronted by a culture where everything is different. and you are expected to integrate, but unless you are already integrated, you find it very difficult to integrate. if you understand what I mean. This word, integrate is very popular in Britain. All immigrants are expected to integrate. But I imagine the librarian secretly wondering if I can actually read and enjoy the books I am borrowing, or if I am just trying to improve my english. And then I am unable to understand what he says, making it worse! I guess if I get out more and work, and come into contact with more people, I will start following the accent more easily, after all I can follow even strangers speaking simple Tamil directly to me now, when earlier I would lose all understanding when addressed face to face, even though I could follow the same words spoken to someone else, without the pressure you see.. Maybe, inspite of growing up with English I am facing the same problem here, and that is quite sad. I should give the British and Britain a chance. To see me as just another human being. and not as an indian who has migrated from india and become an immigrant and needs to integrate. by dressing, speaking, being the way they can understand and appreciate me.