Had Anil Pal ever met or heard of Dr Pravin Shingare, he would probably have been working hard to fulfil his father’s dream. The 18-year-old aspiring doctor from Uttar Pradesh committed suicide because he couldn’t cope with English in college.
Like Anil, Dr Shingare too struggled with the Queen’s language. “I hail from Khamgaon, a small village,” said Dr Shingare. “I spent my life at a Marathi school as my father could not afford (to send me to) an English-medium school. In medical college, I was faced with thick medical textbooks by foreign authors,” said the JJ Hospital Dean.
But the 53-year-old bought a learn-English-quick book and always had a Bernard Shaw novel with his anatomy textbooks. Shingare is one of the many personalities to have successfully mastered English at a later stage in life to pursue their careers.
“After studying for years in a different language, grasping English can get difficult for an average student,” said senior criminal lawyer Majeed Memon, who studied at the Urdu-medium Anjumuni Islam School. “It must have made Pal feel insecure.”
Memon himself took two years to grasp the language and spent hours studying grammar through his BA.
{{/usCountry}}Memon himself took two years to grasp the language and spent hours studying grammar through his BA.
{{/usCountry}}For the Marathi-medium schooled Uttam Khobragade, mastering English became a goal after he decided to take the Indian Administrative Services exams. “There was no electricity where I studied and I had to work on a field during the summers. But I knew English was very important to succeed, so I never gave up.” The Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport Undertaking General Manager today has two English books to his credit.
Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, who went to a Marathi-medium school in Jalgaon, taught himself English while studying in law college.