My English, it is neither King’s nor Queen’s English,
Nor British English,
My English my own,
It is nor American English,
Full of Americanism and Americanness,
Nor with the English accent and stress
Full of fine tonal effects and nasal sounds.
My English my own which speak I
Laboriously learnt, library-consulted
With the pronunciation and speaking power of my own,
One which full of so much so Indianism, I mean the Indian words,
Going through the process of Indianization
And tracking the theme of Indianness,
Just like the vernacular or any other regional language
Or dialect of the region speak I,
Giving it the colour of some Indian tongue and tenor
But the English speak I, understand they not,
Taking it for some spoken at home,
Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Assamese or Oriya,
Punjabi, Sindhi, Haryanvi,
Tamil, Telugu, Kannada or Malayalam
Or some of the tribal stock.
And I going, speaking in my own right,
Reading and giving the seminar paper
Without a stop
As they may question me in good English
With a tone of their own
And which I may not understand,
Hence, I going like a non-stop, brake-failed cart
As the platform of my own lies it there,
Ay, the diaspora dais is there.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem