A Story of My Love Affair with Language

When it comes to study, everyone has their memories from childhood. Me too. So if I have to sum up my whole childhood in one word it would be this : MATHEMATICS. Doesn't matter how much you score in other subjects, if your math score is bad, you are a #gadha (donkey). Atleast that was the scenario in my place. 

Now I wouldn't lie. I really loved Math (& still do). The dance of numbers, the allignment of geometry & the magic of graphs was exciting from top to bottom. The process of getting trapped in a difficult math problem & using all your mental faculties to reach the final solution is nothing short of a mini adventure. During that period nothing can distract me unless it's an earthquake.

I remember when I was in class 3 or 4, we got a tape recorder & we used to play Odia albums almost everyday. I used to keep humming those songs all day. Also at night every Saturday we used to watch Odia movies. So there was always this hunger for stories & music. 

During those days sitting in classroom was difficult. Except math no other subjects were partially interesting to me. All I wanted was something that comes through mind & reaches straight to heart. Now I can't ask my teacher to show me movies or play music in classroom. So I had to find a way to entertain myself. 

I started leaning towards Odia poetry. I found that it was very similar to music. There was word play, a sense of beauty & a form of composition which we usually find in music. At the same time, I fulfilled my hunger of movies through Odia stories. There was a hero, you follow him all the way till the end & you tend to empathise with him, except that everything was more real & less dramatic. I even went upto the extent of reading the biography of Indira Gandhi in class 5 because it was so interesting to read stories which were real.  

When I was in class 6 or 7, I was fascinated by one more area. Odia Prose. It was a different kind of world. There was not necessarily any story or poetic composition. But there I saw an instrument very similar to math. It was the use of "language" to solve problems. Here the problems were not meant for fun or simple mental exercise like math. I felt like they were more humane & has so much to do with our daily life. The problems related to our thoughts, our values & our way of conduct. 

By the time I was in class 10, I was in love with prose, poetry & stories. But it was all confined to Odia. Then we got our most dynamic English teacher whom we call Bhuban Sir. I remember one day he was reading this poetry called "Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening" by Robert Frost. I can't even put into words how deeply that resonated to my own life. On that day, for me English became such an instant fascination (& still is). Then it immediately spread to other areas like English prose & English stories like a wildfire in a Jungle. 

Now we are nearing the end of this post & I will talk about those 2 years of my life that LITERALLY made me fall in love with language. I'm sure it will stay that way for my entire life. Welcome to Class 11th & 12th. 

In a science degree, usually people don't get much time to spend on subjects like langauge papers. But it was different in my college in the middle of Dhenkanal city. Besides, the kind of teachers I got there in language subjects like Odia & English were way beyond what I could expect at a science college. I was in ecstasy. 

Our Odia teacher, Mr. Suresh Mishra, was a magician of words. Everything he said sounded like poetry. I guess, you have to really really really love the language & culture of Odisha to become a person like Suresh Sir. In English we had our teacher, Mr Sudhanshu Dash, whose poetry is still being read at Oxford University. I felt like he is the husband & English is his wife. He always taught us with so much grace that you can't help falling in love with this language. Besides, I would never forget that subject "Stay hungry, Stay foolish" which I read atleast 20 times in +2. It only enhanced my love for English language in further years. & also introduced me to this amazing pioneer called Steve Jobs.

In the end, it was the kind of teachers I got who made me fall in love with language & gave me an eye to see the world through the lense of words. 

A big thank you to all my teachers for this amazing gift.