Mom and Aunt on their first trip to the UK and America from old pokey airport in hokey Bangalore, both English teachers asked at the international destination in loud voices that could wake up the dead, “Can you speak English?” 

A classmate and friend, born and bred in America, mostly saying with genuine shock, “Your grandmother speaks flawless English!”  Just when I begin to think it’s a big deal to speak English, Jaggi and me in a pizzeria somewhere in a tiny village near Florence, Italy, a girl says, “You seem to be speaking only in English.  Are you from England?” No, we are from India, we chorus!"  “Oh then you should speak Indian, like we speak Italian”.  Got me thinking about how my great grandparents on both sides (four sets) spoke and wrote in flawless albeit a slightly archaic English.  They had gone from Savile Row suits to Swadeshi.  From England and English education to India and their Roots.  My great grandmother from her tiny hamlet had come in to Calicut to find matriarchs who sneered in English but chewed paan as well, wore their homeland's clothing, but had learnt to play tennis, an English game. (Their pretentions made her giggle).  It made me constantly think about the privileged and the not so privileged and how one made the other feel.  And I realised that being kind was one of the biggest life lessons one could learn or teach.  So, sometimes when I get carried away by my own sharp wit and sarcastic reactions to people’s cruelty or insensitivity to another or to me, I remember my aunt and mom telling me to handle the situation with grace, not to retort or to get into a slanging match.  But a lot of times I have not taken their advice.  I have narrowed my eyes, flared my nostrils and icily hissed at people shredding them to bits.  I can’t say I’m proud of this because I’m not and yet because of my mother and aunt I will at least remember that I should take the higher ground and be the better person. That these insensitive, mean cruel people will be ‘hoist by their own petard’.  But I am never really sure, and so throw caution to the winds, will ‘dignify things with a comment’ (many comments), will not spare the perpetrator, will apologise if I am the perpetrator.   When I said I had the disposition of the wonderful women in our family, I meant cheerfulness and a down to earth disposition, and will never, as my Father told Jaggi, ever be a patch on my Mother or Aunt but that I was a good human being in my own right.