During this time, I was in the Polytechnic and there was ongoing live cricket on TV. Armed with my new interest in Cricket, I started watching it and was anguished by the fact that I could make out little from the English commentary.

Gradually, somewhere somehow it happened.

Coupled with fathers hot pursuit and the insult that English commentary was going over my head, I started to force myself to pickup Hindu and read. Initially it was still very difficult to assimilate stories. Both grasping the language as well as making sense of the variety of topics in which news is published were extremely tiring.

Gradually at the college, I had begun to speak to just one friend from Nilambur, in my still very poor English, with a terrible sense of grammar and with a vocabulary that contained a very small set of words. 

Until that time it was my father trying to get me attracted in the language and me getting repelled. By this time, I got truly attracted and fallen in love with this great language. If he had at any point, left his pursuit which spanned many years, today I would not have been writing this. I would not be speaking English, I would not have got any job, and I would have even failed in life in spite of my education.

Although, the trigger came from the Cricket match, it was he who sow the seeds in me with his untiring effort.

A language is not a beautiful girl and it is not as lovable as the serenity and cool environs of a hill station, but today I understand it is much more than both. A command of English language or any other language understood by a vast humanity is not only a great tool, skill in such a popular language also gives you great satisfaction and ability to move, and mingle with a vast humanity. This satisfaction is ongoing as you are learning the language all your life.

It is to be attributed to him, his great persistence, and unwavering effort, based on the sole hope that his child would one day pick the newspaper with a true inclination for reading it. 'Hindu' was his vehicle for the accomplishment of that goal.

It is his achievement that his son is not afraid of this language anymore. No matter what mistakes I make, it has been my pledge that I will continue to work hard in both correcting and improving my language. Today, he would have been proud of my achievement. Unfortunately cancer has taken him in 1996 but he continues to be my guide.

Also, I must express my immense gratitude for my English teacher of the 10th standard who had systematically punished his students during his English class for having failed his questions about the previous class. It is because of him I secured the pass mark required in English for the SSLC (10th standard) examination.

Next : What has been achieved?