HONORIFICABILITUDINITATIBUS

My son,
This
Is not
The name of a double decker bus.
Neither is it an octopus or anemone,
Nor a duck billed platypus.

Your great grandpa taught me
This one .
He being the first bachelor
Of the English art
In his Malayali village
Where more than half of the folks
Didn’t ever see
The insides of a school.


Ah, he just loved them all
The orations, proverbs, idioms
This was just one
Among his favourite arrows
The utterance of which
Instantly presented him
A oneness with the world
Where the sun never set.

My son, your father
Studied in an English medium school
In a Malayalam speaking country.
Rule one was to speak only in English
Rule two was compulsory black leather shoes
Rules which intertwined, unwittingly
In a dangerous embrace, to create
A caricature of history.

'Our Sita is missing
Search for her
Not in Lanka
But in Lancashire '
Forgotten words
From the half-naked fakir.

In our country of contrasts
English remains unshaken
Sophistication, status, style.
So much so that
The most respected Indian
Is the English speaking Indian.
Honorificabilitudinitatibus.

My son,
Open your windows to the world,
Let the light in.
Still, stand firm on the earth
Stay true to her stories.

References :
1. Half naked fakir -  Mahatma Gandhi as described by Winston Churchill.
2. The poem is a take on the role of the English language in post-independence India.