My story: Learning English

Let me start with a couple of questions to you all. Can you remember the first sentence that you boldly used or phrased for conversation and felt so happy? For me, I can tell, English is my 3^rd language and the first sentence that I learnt was “My name is ABC”. So story goes like this – I come from a rural part of our country. Our village is located around 300 km away from a nearest city and lies between 2 towering Himalayan ranges – Mt. Dhaulagiri (8,167 m) and Annapurna ranges (8091 m) and Mt. Nilgiri (7,061 m) in the North. Along our village flows a ferocious river named Kali Gandaki, which is both a source of water, inspirations, recreation and sometime, pain & misery due to yearly floods and landslides. 

To reach our village, it takes 6 – 7 hours of rough bus ride from nearest city. But, when we were children, it used to take 4 straight days of walk from morning to evening each day to reach that nearest city. Sometime, one whole day of uphill walk and sometime, one whole day of downhill walk. Life was tough and still, it IS to some of us living there.

In early 1980s, I was studying in a government primary school, where the medium of teaching and learning was only Nepali. In those days, life was beautiful, full of innocence, playing along river, rivulets and jungles that surround our village. I was no different to any child. I was a curious boy with lots of questions.  At that time, we did know much outside our village. We thought this is the only world!! Can you imagine? We did not know what video game is, we have never seen what a TV is like, and we have not seen a bi – cycle or car or a bus. We were living a life of middle ages. Rarely, we used to see some rich people carrying a funny chatter box called TAPE. We used to get so amazed with this fine instrument that we used to follow him hours to get the glimpse of it and hear the NOISE that it produced. And for few days, we used to get hypnotized by the magic that TAPE displayed and used to think hard, “How can any person be so tiny and sing a song from that TAPE?”

With childhood innocence, we grew up together with our friends INNOCENT of outside world of invention and development happening at speedy rate. Fortunately, our land was & is naturally gifted with majestic Himalayan range. Many trekkers and mountaineers visit our village to climb those mountains. We were starting to see them quiet often and used to get amazed at their health, clean dress, shoes and of course, the LANGUAGE they spoke. It was very new to us. One courtesy, we learnt from our seniors at least to say “Namaste to all” who used to stay in our village or met them on the trail. 

One fine day, I was on my way to school and I met a young trekker with a big bag pack and I greeted him saying “Namaste”. He also greeted me back – “Namaste”. After our exchange of good word, he was somehow interested in taking a picture of me. He took my picture and asked me – “what is your name?” But, at that time, we were not taught English so I could not understand but I tried to comprehend what he was trying to say. He also tried very hard to make me understand in sign language. Somewhere by click, I thought, I understood what he was asking, so I boldly said – “ABC”. “Yes” he said and he was very happy finally we could at least exchange few words. He again told me patiently, “Tell me – My name is ABC” several times. After minutes of trial and error, I finally said – “My name is ABC” with mixture of my local accent. He was very happy and gave me a CHOCOLATE as a reward. I also felt very happy and remembered that sentence very dearly with “sweet reward” in mind and heart. 

Thereafter, I began to learn English very hard. I have to say, this beautiful language opened me to world of knowledge, be it science, geography or literature. Without it, I would have been loitering around village till now. Finally, let me say, “Language is the best invention that human beings have invented. There is nothing near to it”.