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I can focus on one experience from my own life. Here before embarking on this theme, I should stress that even though there are people who array as my antagonists, in the story, there is no need to frame them as villains or heroes. What I am narrating is only experiences, which gave me insights and observation, and helped me with my experiments on language codes. There is no need to feel that I am the hero or the great. I am not.
I married from a family that had English proficiency more or less tending to zero. My wife, even though formally educated, had no idea about English. Her parents, uncles, aunts and almost all kinfolk at the time were of similar levels. She came to know of Reader’s Digest only after her marriage. Had never seen an English film, and had no idea what an English Classic was. When I asked her to try to speak in English and spoke to her in English, her retort was, ‘My father is not an Englishman’, more or less putting on record her loyalty to traditional links, as she strove to become more proficient in English.
In an ‘Indian’ family, there are positions that are assigned to every member. She was mentally seen as the servant in the household to look after the house. However, I was in a quandary as I faced this possibility as the others in the household cunningly played their game to garner her loyalty to the household by means of verbal codes. She had no qualms about being addressed as Nee, even by younger members of my household, where I myself was not given much value. Assigning values is a means of positioning persons.
I took up the stance that my wife should not be addressed as Nee by youngsters. Moreover, I used to introduce her as Avar (Higher She, Her), even though the standard word meant for wife is Oal (Aval) (lower She, Her). This was seen as a mad proposition, wherein I was more or less positioning her above myself. When I saw her being accosted by the servant maid of my other kinfolk’s household and taking her to the kitchen area and addressing her as Nee, I had to caution her, which she then took it as an affront and sort of controlling her rights of articulation. There was no doubt that the servant maid would have branded me as a male chauvinist who wanted to block the liberty of my wife.
My wife also very emphatically told me that in her own house area, everyone would address other younger persons as Nee (actually Inhi). She couldn’t very well see through the game, wherein this sort of communication had a definite route for ennoblement and another for despoiling.
I had this experience wherein when we were in a government office and I introduced her as Avar. The official took it first as a strange communication, and pointedly asked me what my relationship with the female was. When I said that she (evar) was my wife, he took it as an impertinent action meant to degrade him.
I took my wife everywhere in Kerala and outside, in many of my business tours. Mentally her world expanded. The positive change in her demeanour as her mind started expanding was quite visible. Facial expression had a change. The very fact that she was improving beyond the traditional levels of a female, was not liked by other females in both the households. Here was a female who was being trained to go outside into the various places as a business owner.
Her own family side had the complaint that she was been bullied by me to go out and face the world. When once we came from Quilon, in a crowded train, which we got in without ticket reservation, I had to hear the complaint she was being bullied. For, they would only take a female with a reservation ticket. The issue here was that they travel occasionally. We used to travel frequently and each travel was a different experience.
There was this issue. She at that time did not have the ‘avar’ features in her personality, having been brought up as a person meant to find satiation in ‘Indian’ lower class mentality. So, whenever I took her on my business trips, to give her an exposure to the outer world, it had the effect of inducing a negative value on me. There was even an occasion when a small time businessman in Calicut used the word ‘Chotta’ (small-timer) to a Hindi speaking business agent from the north, on his query of what I was.
It was mentioned and my wife also heard it. She understood it as an attribute of mine, instead of understanding that my uplifting her was creating the negative impression on others. For usually no businessman would take his wife on long business journeys. I was however compelled to do it, for otherwise, my wife would have no difference in mental quality from the maid servant in our household.
Now, the situation was of a female in the household who was slowly becoming very good in English, and was quite well-informed about various outside world features including going to various government offices on her own (which I admit was not an enjoyable thing). Yet, the moment she was seen along with the other females in her household, a very definite difference in facial expression was visible. She could comprehend British and American accent. Now, the whole aim of the others was to see that she rebelled against me.
I tried to bring in English into our mutual communication, to remove the word Nee from usage. This was in effect actually removing my position of domination over her. Yet, her own family members still had command over her by the usage of these kinds of words, which they wouldn’t (and possibly couldn’t) forego. She could be called by phone and asked in very definite terms to defy my wishes in regard to where to go and where not to go.
Her superior demeanour was liked as a presence by her huge link of joint family connections. But then she was clearly becoming better and that positive aura could be cornered by me. Now what had to be done was to see that she rebels and goes off-track. I could see the sinister communication setup that was aiming for this. For, I did notice relatives giving the hint in words and actions that she was quite superior and how come she was married to me? One female relative simply told me, as if to caution me, ‘She is very able!’ with a hint in the voice that I was devoid of any abilities. In no time, she herself was getting the feeling that she was a highly able person who was shackled to a low quality me.
Family troubles came up and business failed, due to this distraction. I could see that the very definite aim of others was to see that I became an employee of some small-time business. That was there in many persons’ pointed words, that I was not working.
The fact was that I was very busy as an English trainer. However, there was my disposition that what I was doing as my business was not for these inimical persons to know and discuss. For, the very fact that I had always kept away from working for others, but subsisting on self-employment was a disturbing thing to many of my relatives who had high-sounding jobs, but still had the issues of being an employee of another person. The mere fact that I was not anyone’s subordinate was a totally unheard of thing.
One day I heard that my wife was joining an English medium school. She was taken up as a teacher. My first child had already being admitted there without my permission. The school was owned by a person who was reputed to have been an Airport worker in Bombay, who had made money by working in the Gulf (UAE Dirham multiplies nearly 20 times in Indian currency] . Now, the very fact that my wife was a low-class rich man’s employee was crushing blow to me. She came home every day with a tremendous feeling of achievement, as she moved with the lowly informed teacher-class who was the employees of an Airport cleaner. He did not know much or rather any English.
However, later, much later as her perspective improved, she started seeing her level as an employee of another competing businessman. For, I was also trying hard to set up an English training institution.
An observation on virtual energy
Now, I have to digress to an area that may be way beyond the context here. It may have some bearing on women’s liberations, husband’s rights over his wife, the social mobility of a wife in a feudal language society and to deep areas of the virtual codes that maintain both the human body as well as reality.
If the wife of a man moves in the company of another man, as an equal or a subordinate or even superior, what is the effect on the husband? Well, if the wife of an IAS officer (the senior most level of the Indian bureaucracy) moves in the company of a peon. How does it affect her husband?
Before going ahead, let me say this: If a good-looking female speaks to me on the road in a positive manner. I immediately feel an energy arising in me. It is more so, if she is in an obsequious pose of respect to me. This is true even if she is not good-looking. Even if it is a male and not a female, there is a certain level of energy increase in me. If a good looking female gives me a warm smile, it showers me with energy and warmth. All these things really improve my social performance in other areas. If the scene of a beautiful female speaking to me is seen by the others in the society, again it enhances my social energy.
In the above paragraph, I used the word ‘I’ because I should not put this claim on others, without their consent. However, what I mentioned here could be a standard truth, especially in a feudal language social system, where indicant words change with virtual energy inputs.
When the wife of an IAS officer moves with a peon, either publically or not, there shall be a definite energy and personality enhancement in the peon. It shall be through various routes of energy flow. One very direct virtual energy improvement through the proximity of a female, a senior positioned female and sexually opposite person. Actually, the feeling of sexual urge is also connected to certain virtual energy spurring. Other indirect virtual energy enhancement could be connected to the fact that the peon is directly getting access to the interiors of the superior echelons of the administrative power.
The first mentioned virtual energy mainly comes from the virtual energy repository of her husband. In fact, if the lady connects to the peon without an adequate firewall protection, the husband would really feel the energy drain.
At the same time, if the peon’s wife is in the presence of the IAS officer, there shall be an energy enhancement in him. But not much, or of comparable values. Unless, it goes beyond the limits of perfunctory contact and goes in for physical intimacy.
Now, the issue of this virtual energy depreciation is there in many feudal language social systems. The main problem in these systems is that various people are in various levels of comparative virtual energy. Moreover this energy can be visualised in a relative manner. Meaning that the frame of reference is quite important. If the frame of reference is official power, it is one kind. If it is physical prowess, it is another. If it is intellectual acumen, it is quite another. Like that.
In the case of wives of men of equal social levels mingling with other men, there is really a virtual energy enhancement in the males, and a consequent depreciation in the affected husbands. However, since it is a dynamic state, with females of every male mingling with other males of equal stature, everyone gets balanced.
In the case of social systems with planar languages like English, this issue is not of much concern, for not much of a depreciation and appreciation takes place between males in the usual case. And everything is balanced as many females mix with many males and vice versa.
However, in the case of an IAS officer’s wife moving in the companionship of or as a colleague of a peon, the situation is filled with a very negative issue to the IAS officer. More so, if it is without his consent. If it is with his consent, and the peon is a loyal subordinate of the IAS officer, then not much of a negative issue affects the IAS officer. For, the wife moving with the peon is only an affirmation of the IAS officer’s command and control codes.
Now, this is something that I need to mention here. When my wife joined as a teacher in a school run by person who had been a cleaner in an Indian airport, it was a terrible blow to my virtual energy. The second factor was that the teacher class therein, as in majority schools in India, was of a very low quality kind. In fact, when Varuna joined the school, it was found that many teachers used to come and speak to her just to improve their English.
Actually this was a training strategy in our English training programme. I do not think that at that moment, any teacher in that school had any idea about English classics, Enid Blyton, the huge variety of English nursery rhymes, English comics, English fairy tales etc. Moreover, computers and Internet were an unknown application to them, while Varuna had been using them for at least four years before joining that school.
Actually, I had no issue with interacting with the teacher class, for I knew my distance from them. Actually I have had taken training for some of them also. However, the moment my wife joined the school as one of the staff there, all my inner superiority literally went limp. Speaking of my weak superiority complex, it was one mental prop that I carried everywhere. I do not know how it came upon me or when it came upon me.
I have had problem with addressing anyone with a Sir or Saar. In fact, in my various living in various locations in India, I have faced financial difficulties of a very acute level at many times. Actually, I would miss a chance to make money at many times, just due to my propensity not to address another man with money with a Sir or Saar. However, at the other end, there was this equally preposterous posture. I would ask others not to address me with a Sir or Saar. Actually an action that was sure to demean my standards.
I was living in the remote village when my house is situated in. I do not have any emotional links to the place. People here respect money for which they are willing to go to the Middle East and work in low level jobs. That is a good thing. However, their children back home do not give respect to persons who are made poor due to the lowering of the Indian currency exchange rate.
In this village, wherein also I maintained an inner mental superiority complex without having any financial acumen to display. {Again I must admit here itself that this pose of destitution was also a slightly contrived one. For, all I had to do was to reassert my family address, and I am back to the level of a fabulously rich standard}. My shallow superiority complex was possibly detected by at least some persons. For, there was one English teacher who had been my non-formal trainee for some time. He came running to inform me that my wife was also a teacher like him, with a very ample display of satiation at having found some platform to bring me to his level.
My wife joined the school due to the various cajoling from family members who wanted to cut me to size. Actually, at that particular time, I had actually being engaged in a very highly earning training programme in a city. However, the terrible planning and conspiracies that were moving in a most concealed manner was disturbing my mind. And as was usual, that training programme also sizzled out.
When my wife joined, for the first time in my life I felt some real depreciation in my virtual energy. I would go cold. In the midst of a simmering afternoon my body would freeze. If a psychologist were to be asked, he would mumble some nonsense about my mind being affected by some psychosomatic illness. Frankly, he doesn’t know anything about the human mind, it machinery and how it works. What he knows about the human mind could be total rubbish. But then that is his bread and butter.
I remember a time when a young man came to me to learn English. I covered myself with a thick blanket and taught him without even looking at him. For even my face would be covered. He improved his English. I do not remember seeing his face.
In my own mind, my case was worse than the case of the wife of an IAS officer joining as a peon in another government office. For, mentally I use to place even an IAS officer below my mental stature. However, an IAS officer gets an astronomical amount of money as pay, perks, pension, commutation of pension and much else. As for me, I need to earn each penny of mine. Moreover, in the case of the IAS officer, he is given the highest statures of the Indian feudal indicant words. As for me, I refuse the heights of the indicant words, and try to exist at a planar level. It is a very precarious location. A precipice, actually, from where the fall to the bottom of the indicant word gorge is quite easy.
I should mention here that many years later when I had mentally accepted the situation, I used to take my wife on my bike everyday in the morning hours to the bus stand around 1 km away. The very going on the bike with my wife, who now had a personality much above local vernacular impact, in the full view of the people in the small town did have a very powerful positive value addition in my virtual code. I would feel the positive energy fill in me. For, I knew the seeing of my wife as an appendage to me was adding to my indicant code value.
It may be added in between that a working wife in an Indian language environment and in an English environment can be a totally different mental and social effect. For, In English there is no issue of indicant codes. In feudal vernaculars, it is there. Powerfully. It can and does create a different world, where every effect is different.
I would like to mention this much about this phenomenon. I have read about some local film-stars claiming that they arrive at some supernatural levels of energy when they act and such things. On close scrutiny, I noticed that they lived in an elevated mental stature of ‘Chettan’, ‘Saar’ etc. along with the huge magnification on the silver screen that promotes them in a larger-than-life mode, a great heroes.
There is naturally a huge enhancement of virtual code values through all this, which leads to powerful energy induction. To erase this ‘supernatural’ level of energy, all one has to do is to have them addressed by their mere name and Nee, and referred to as Avan and Aval, by lower stature persons.
DIGRESSION:
However, I have noticed the exact opposite of this phenomenon in Ashwina when she was admitted to the local English medium school. She, who was never mentioned or addressed in the lower or higher indicant words in Malayalam, was now made to position herself with children who were in the lower indicant word positions at home and school. In each word, gesture and claim, the other children would pull her down to their level. They would get an energy enhancement through this.
As for Ashwina, she would feel the terrible pull down. Every day she would come from school in a terrible mood of heaviness. She would look as if a huge burden was on her.
In the case of Varuna, there was another very much discernible effect. One man, who had shaken hands with her before she joined school in class 5, was quite surprised when he shook her hands one or two years after she had joined school. He said that earlier when he shook her hands, he could feel a very great power in her, and her hands quite warm. However, in the latter occasion, it was as if her energy had drained off. He could feel it.
In the case of Ashwina, she did not face a lot of mutually contradictory experiences, in that she was born at a time, when my own wife took a very rabid stand against my policies, taking into consideration the viewpoint of her various relatives and also relatives from my own side. So, it is possible that Ashwina did have this disadvantage in her early years. Still she was a great trainer in English at a very young age. END OF DIGRESSION
When a subordinate is improved beyond his innate levels
This incident in my life was a sharp evidence on what happens in feudal language systems as one strives to improve the subordinates, who are actually quite satisfied with their lowly lot. The moment you improve them and they are seen as improving beyond their traditional stations, others would impel them to revolt against their very benefactor. In fact, there were times, in the midst of verbal battles when she had no qualms of addressing me with a Nee, Poda etc. Both are words with a direction towards a snubbed, suppressed, dominated inferior, when used outside the ambit of affection for a son, a loyal subordinate, wife etc.
The implausibility of husband-wife equality in feudal languages
Now that I have mentioned the issue of husband-wife communication codes in Malayalam, I am forced to elaborate on this theme, for I cannot leave it unfinished. Is it possible in feudal languages like Malayalam for the wife to be the equal of her husband? Well, it is not possible, in many ways. Maybe she can be the superior, by means of troubling impertinence. However, the equal dignity that is there in an unwritten form in English cannot be enacted in Malayalam. In other Indian languages, one needs to see the exact word code to find out whether it is possible and through which word code route.
I have observed the cumulative effect of this forced equalisation in Malayalam, in the life of my sister. She was a doctor, with a specialisation. Though not of any inimical behaviour codes, she did definitely have an individuality that wouldn’t suit the Malayalam codes. She tried out this equalisation with her husband. She would address him as Nee and he would address her as Nee. She would call him by his name, with no ‘respect’ suffixed. Well, in the intimate areas of their household, it may have no problem. However, in the outside, it could have produced problems for the husband.
For, in the last count, a person’s ‘respect’ in Malayalam words is derived by someone promoting ‘respect’ by such words as Chettan, Ningal, Avar, Adheham, Saar, Maadam etc. For instance, one man introduces another with a suffix of ‘respect’, and naturally the others who hear it are compelled to use it, or at least understand that this man is ‘respected’. Now, in all social communications, this would be definitely missed by the husband.
And these codes of ‘respect’ are the most powerful ingredient in a feudal language social system that gives speed, acceleration and power to all of one’s deliberate social and professional actions. Well, I could only foresee a miserable eventuality in the offing, as the wife tried to achieve equality in word codes that more or less ended up erasing the nobility of the husband.
It is like trying to use MS Word to create an Adobe PageMaker file. A more or less similar product can be made, but then one has to use a lot of cunning ingenuity to give an MS Word file a semblance of a PageMaker product. Actually, the truth is one cannot do Adobe PageMaker functions in MS Word. Only the printed out material can be made to seem as if it is from the other.
There was another observation that came my way. It was connected to the virtual codes that are behind everyone, every material event and even behind the universe. This I have discussed in my book: CODES of REALITY! WHAT is LANGUAGE?
Equalisation to the lower depths
Now this is another aspect of improving a person in English. He or she feels a lot of mental improvement. He would even feel that he or she is quite equal to the person/s who is allowing this English ambience to him or her. At the same time, when he or she is in the companionship or link to his or her traditional social/familial leadership, he or she will immediately fall back to coy subservience.
Now, it is here that another connected phenomenon has to be mentioned. When a native ‘Indian’ speaks in English about a native-English person or another socially senior person allows him or her, the liberty to communicate in English, makes the senior person just a He or She, Him or Her, and His or Her. The subordinate person may even address the senior person by his or her name, with or without a Mr. or Mrs. prefixed.
A mental feeling of equality of status sets in. Now there is an acute social danger that can get triggered. When the junior person moves back into his or her traditional social set, wherein he or she speaks with parents, uncles, aunts and other senior persons, he or she may carry back this social equalisation to this feudal communication arena. Here, the senior English person should not be a mere name, but a name with a suffix of solid ‘respect’.
The word He should be the higher word such as UNN, Adheham, Avar etc. However, the moment the subordinate person speaks about him in this arena, he or she would try to use the mere name or maybe the name with a Mr. or Mrs. prefixed. The moment this is done, senior person is removed from the UNN, Adheham and Avar level to that of USS, Ayaal, or even Avan level.
It is a powerful equalisation to the lower depths of the ‘Indian’ feudal communication set up. The subordinate person would feel a social elevation among his or her native ‘Indian’ companions. In that he or she can use the lower words about the senior person, which is really a totally forbidden action in the local social set up. Actually, it is so powerful that it cannot even be contemplated by most people in a serene mood. {Off course, when one is angry with someone senior, one may use these words, inside the security of one’s home walls).
When anyone does it on physically powerful persons, he or she can very well get beaten up into a pulp. No one would dare to use a lower word about a policeman unless he or she is securely fixed above him. For, the prospect of a broken limb is very much there, if this be attempted.
Yet, the licence to do this horrible thing is what comes about in a lower person when he is given even a temporary transit into the English world of equality.
Now, even though this lowering of social status cannot be done on any socially senior ‘Indian’, the English speaker really has no such defence. He or she can very well get dragged to the depths of social gutters, for the simple crime of associating with a lower ‘Indian’ from an insecure location of equal dignity. Equal dignity is not a concept in feudal languages. This very fact has missed the social studies by an immensity of English academicians (not all).
