I said, "I'll buy you lunch."
He said, "Really?"
I nodded.
He said, "Are you sure?"
I nodded.
He said, "Thank you."
I nodded.
Lunch was good because there was this 74 year-old Pakistani guy; a language purist who has lived in London for 50 years but was damn proud that he could still pronounce 'chhoti qaaf' and 'sheen'. It was entertaining at the time, hilarious actually, how he damned all English-speaking Pakistani code-switchers as "ghaddaariyon" and that he had cut off ties with half of his Pakistani family because they prefer calling their aunts 'Auntie' and their uncles 'Uncle' instead of the Urdu equivalents.
So bloody what? Since when did you have the right to tell us what to think or feel? If we do feel inadequate and inferior to the white Anglo-Saxons, maybe, just maybe, it's the result of assimilating to the colonialist way of living. After all, it's an amalgamation of a zillion forces and the chaos effect and post-modernism.
It has arrived. Everyone of us thinks we are important, that we mean something in the grand scheme of things. That we all deserve immediate gratification, and everything else that is grinding away at the fabric that made us human. For that era. Perhaps we are evolving into other breeds.
For crying out loud, though. I loved Macaulay so much at that moment. That I took her class and she taught me all about code-switching and how it was the complete opposite of defective language learning; it is actually an ingenious way of multilinguals to use all the tools they have at their disposal.
Tarts.
Another example of how I learnt something from book-learning that there is no way I'd have been able to figure out by myself through 'real-life experiences'. I need things pointed out to me, after all. I am dumb.
I fear abandonment, by the way. Another thing that had to be pointed out to me. So how exactly am I to have a functioning relationship? Doubt that's going to happen. I'm in love with the idea of being in love. And yes, I know that is a cliché.
Which brings me to something else. I think I am majorly pissed off because I was born when everything has been done, or is being done by someone else who is not me. There is no more discovery of a symphony or watercolour painting. No more coining of words, the last person who was celebrated for that was Spooner. No more creation of the modernist or post-modernist literary or other movements.
It's all been done. Every word that I use has already been used a million times over, each phrase I have used has previously been used by at least thousand others. Every thought or belief I have had, it's the result of other people and their thoughts and it all leads back to the beginning. I quest for originality, and find none. Because the damned bloody quest for originality is as old as all of this. It's not regeneration; it's a rehashing.
Something that made sense two millenia ago will make sense encore. We see this with the female child-killing in China, which used to take place in Arabia. And loads of other things, I am sure. The waning of religion and faith. Stuff like that.
Anyway. I'm full of bollocks. Even Anouska got ticked off with me yesterday.
He said, "Really?"
I nodded.
He said, "Are you sure?"
I nodded.
He said, "Thank you."
I nodded.
Lunch was good because there was this 74 year-old Pakistani guy; a language purist who has lived in London for 50 years but was damn proud that he could still pronounce 'chhoti qaaf' and 'sheen'. It was entertaining at the time, hilarious actually, how he damned all English-speaking Pakistani code-switchers as "ghaddaariyon" and that he had cut off ties with half of his Pakistani family because they prefer calling their aunts 'Auntie' and their uncles 'Uncle' instead of the Urdu equivalents.
So bloody what? Since when did you have the right to tell us what to think or feel? If we do feel inadequate and inferior to the white Anglo-Saxons, maybe, just maybe, it's the result of assimilating to the colonialist way of living. After all, it's an amalgamation of a zillion forces and the chaos effect and post-modernism.
It has arrived. Everyone of us thinks we are important, that we mean something in the grand scheme of things. That we all deserve immediate gratification, and everything else that is grinding away at the fabric that made us human. For that era. Perhaps we are evolving into other breeds.
For crying out loud, though. I loved Macaulay so much at that moment. That I took her class and she taught me all about code-switching and how it was the complete opposite of defective language learning; it is actually an ingenious way of multilinguals to use all the tools they have at their disposal.
Tarts.
Another example of how I learnt something from book-learning that there is no way I'd have been able to figure out by myself through 'real-life experiences'. I need things pointed out to me, after all. I am dumb.
I fear abandonment, by the way. Another thing that had to be pointed out to me. So how exactly am I to have a functioning relationship? Doubt that's going to happen. I'm in love with the idea of being in love. And yes, I know that is a cliché.
Which brings me to something else. I think I am majorly pissed off because I was born when everything has been done, or is being done by someone else who is not me. There is no more discovery of a symphony or watercolour painting. No more coining of words, the last person who was celebrated for that was Spooner. No more creation of the modernist or post-modernist literary or other movements.
It's all been done. Every word that I use has already been used a million times over, each phrase I have used has previously been used by at least thousand others. Every thought or belief I have had, it's the result of other people and their thoughts and it all leads back to the beginning. I quest for originality, and find none. Because the damned bloody quest for originality is as old as all of this. It's not regeneration; it's a rehashing.
Something that made sense two millenia ago will make sense encore. We see this with the female child-killing in China, which used to take place in Arabia. And loads of other things, I am sure. The waning of religion and faith. Stuff like that.
Anyway. I'm full of bollocks. Even Anouska got ticked off with me yesterday.