“You Know” saga.
The year is 2006 and a 6 year old Bidwat will soon, for the first time, attend an english medium school. He doesn’t understand english save for a few nouns and some basic introductory questions and answers1 that he might have picked up during his kinder garden education. He understands words like ‘mango’, ‘bus’, and ‘flower’ but doesn’t understand ‘carry’ or ‘fall’, let alone sentences like ‘The bus carrying mangoes fell in love with the flower.‘
When he went to his father for advice, his father, who he now realizes might not have been very fluent in english as well, told him to just wing it and pretend. “You Know,” he said are the only words that one needs to know in order to speak in english. He told him what that meant, and advised to use the phrase whenever anyone says something in english.
Whether Bidwat understood completely what his father meant is lost in time, but Bidwat took his father’s advice as gospel. On his first couple of days at school, he didn’t really say much. He only listened to what english sounded like, probably focusing on nouns that he did know. Being in a new school almost ten times the size as your old one is sure to be intimidating to anyone let alone a six year old. On his third day, he saw a kid, probably a senior, faint on the morning assembly line which he had never seen before and was genuinely shocking. For all he knew, the kid was dead. After the assembly, he overheard people behind him say “breath”. Bidwat got an idea that his friends must have been talking about the guy who fell down in the assembly and listened. Siddharth said “He was not breathing”. Taking his father’s suggestions, Bidwat joined the conversation with a “He was not breathing, you know?“. And the boys said “ya” and continued talking.
The trick worked. His understood and acknowledged what Bidwat said. This drastically boosted Bidwat’s confidence and he used the phrase for a few more days. He strung together as much of english that he could, and ended or started everything with “you know”. In just a few weeks, Bidwat’s brother was shocked that his sibling could understand and speak english when Keshav let Bidwat know that Faizan threw his bag in the dustbin2. And in time, Bidwat was fluent and the rest is history.
Learnings
The lesson Bidwat’s papa taught him is valuable not only to a child but to every person who wants to learn something. First thing you need in order to learn something new is to have faith in yourself. Trust yourself that you can overcome any problem if you believe that you are capable of doing so (which you undoubtedly are). Second thing is that since you need to start somewhere, start with what little you do know and learn by practise. Had Bidwat doubted the “you know” formula, it might have been very hard for Bidwat to be comfortable to speak the new language. But he took the shot, realized that no one noticed and carried forward.
The next time you feel stuck while learning something, pull a “you know” card. The rest will follow.
1 “What is your name?” “Wow are you?” and their answers.
2 Faizan pulled a passive agressive move over the apparent seat conflict. Bidwat’s brother repremanded the bully.