My English, Sir Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

My English is not British English
Nor American English nor Australian English,
Nor Rhodesian English nor Caribbean English,
Nor Scottish English nor Welsh English,
My English is Indian English
Though there’s nothing like,
It’s colonial,
It’s official,
A language of the school, the college,
The police station and the court,
Law and administration,
Medical science and technology,
Engineering and communication.

My English is Indian English
Though it’s a misnomer,
There’s nothing like that,
My English is alien English,
Non-native, outlandish,
Forced upon,
Spontaneous not,
Learnt laboriously,
Taxing the brain,
Straining the nerves
Ad pressuring,
Struggling to learn
And learning to write.

My English is pidgin-English,
Indian pidgin-English
Though settled her not
And even if they,
Mixed with,
The colour and complexion turned black
In the heat and dust of India
Ruffling it all
When the loo blows it in summer
But the mangoes hanging by
So sweet and delicious,
The black berries,
Jack fruits hanging onto.

My English is Bengali English,
Bihari English,
My English is Odia English,
Assamese English,
My English is Tamil English,
Telugu English,
A South Indian speaking,
Dravidic,
Peculiarly Malyali,
Malyali English,
Kanadiga English,
My English southerner.

My English Punjabi English,
Haryanvi English,
My English from Marathwada,
Marathi English,
Gujarat English
When speaks a Gujarati man,
My English of a convent school
In the strictest stress and sound-system
Of the English,
My English native and rural
Taught under a tree
Where the primary teacher too knows it not
How to pronounce it?

My English tribal English
When the people from the northeast speak it,
When the Santhali speaking use it,
Tribal and aboriginal
Appears it to be then,
My English
Ethnic and racial,
Exotic and wild,
Strange in pronunciation,
Tribal English
With the bows and arrows to shoot
And the missionaries to convert them
After learning Santhali and others.

My English Rajasthani English,
The Marwaris as business managers speaking,
The people with the bulging bellies
Having taken good food,
Clarified butter, milk and fat,
Depositing black money,
Stocking goods at an unknown place
Of hiding,
Banking money,
Misleading the income the income taxman
And the assessor,
My English Sindhi English
Taking me to Sindh and Balochistan.

My English Punjabi English
Turbaned and matted
With the pagadi,
I mean Sardarji
Speaking in English,
Taking tandoori and tadaka
At a dhaba,
Robust and well-built
Doing bhangra,
Reminding of the teachings and the sacrifice
Of the gurus,
Settled in Australia and America
For business purposes.

My English Bihari English
When I can overhear a loafer
Speaking in English,
A rustic from Bihar
Speaking in rough and tough Bhojpuri,
Seeing the Bai whore dance,
Folksy and rural
With the paan,
Indian mouth freshener
And spitting,
Blunt and bluffing
Taught Bihari English,
Rural and rustic.

My English is communicative English,
A link-language,
Connecting the South with the North
Of India,
A library-consulting one,
Learnt in the library
And the lingua lab,
An international language,
A lingua franca of the world,
My English learnt and practiced
And I wavering to speak in,
Hesitating and failing,
Peaking with a hitch,
Finding not the exact terminology,
Falling short of word-stock
And the proper use of vocabulary.