2 - Madam | English

Summary

Madam/Ma’am

Prachi is perhaps the only person I know who talks about The Merchant of Venice and The Three Mistakes of My Life with equal enthusiasm. A literary masterpiece by Shakespeare and a popular novel by an Indian author, Chetan Bhagat, respectively, The Merchant of Venice and The Three Mistakes of My Life are unlikely bedfellows, but for Prachi, they have both served the same purpose – that of improving her English-language skills. Prachi's education was at a Hindi-medium government school. She tried to mitigate the disadvantage of not having learnt English from an early age by cultivating a reading habit as well as practising spoken English:

I really like reading novels. You know, everyone says, the kind of locality I’m from and the kind of school I’ve studied in – I went to a government school – everyone says, it doesn't seem like that. I mean, my spoken English is good. Everyone asks me where I learnt English, but I never went for classes. I’ve never even gone for tuitions; it's all so expensive.

I first met Prachi in mid-2016 when I walked into a café to seek solace in its air-conditioned interiors from the heat and humidity of August in Delhi. Prachi greeted me with ‘Good morning, ma’am’ and a big smile – the title ‘ma’am’ stuck to me thereafter, with all interlocutors addressing me as such. The café was not exactly buzzing in the mornings – the crowd from the nearby Delhi University college only showed up after mid-day, and the manager was also happy letting Prachi and her colleagues manage the opening of the café at 9 a.m., joining them in the afternoon.

Over several mornings in the café, then, Prachi and I bonded over food, fiction and feminism. Prachi liked to talk in English, especially when I was around: ‘I can practice with you, I don't have much opportunity otherwise.’ For this, she was often mocked by her friends. Sheela, a colleague who eventually became her friend, would taunt her: ‘Madam, don't be such an angrez’ (Don't be so English). Sheela also pointed out that ‘Even ma’am speaks in Hindi to us’, referring to my conversations with them, peppered with the suggestion, sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit, that even a UK-based Indian woman speaks Hindi, while Prachi chose to put on a show of her English skills.