The Madness of Hamlet

The job of an MCS was not something I had the faintest clue of as an oblivious kid growing up. I was lost in fantasy world and spent my days playing make believe in a world that contained magic and princesses. This was when I was not at a desk pretending to study because my mum was monitoring me. I aimed for good grades because it was easier than listening to chastising and a good grade got me new toys.

The power I knew was of policemen's. I grew up in battalion areas. I understood that discipline. My dad said I should aim to be an IAS officer and he said: it’d be nice if you were DC one day. I took it at face value because my dad said so that IAS people became DC. I didn’t even know MCS people also got to be DC sometimes.

Me being MCS was not because I wanted to be one overmuch. I became one because it was my easy way out being able to engage in the things I enjoy with people tolerating my outlandish quirks. The things I truly enjoy are not often considered adult-like or dignified. But me liking what I like while being MCS renders me some sort of respectability, if a bit eccentric. This is sometimes the biggest perk of me being MCS.

I have always assumed I would be a productive member of society. I have always taken for granted I would work and earn a living. I have always accepted that I would have to do my best whatever my job was and contributed to the economy however I could. When I was looking for employment fresh out of Uni, I applied for several jobs that I thought could give me a decent pay. This includes me giving NET exam which I hoped I shall never have to use because I have never thought I’d be a good teacher and certainly not a good role model. It never hurts to have a Back Up Plan though. My NET exam was at Jamia Uni campus and someone stole my sister’s apple. As in one solitary fruit from her backpack which was her ‘healthy snack’ instead of her wallet. That was amusing.

I still really had not much clue when I jumped ship from MFAS to MCS what MCS people did. Mostly it was because my dad said: how about you become MCS? I was tired of sitting in a Treasury Office passing the same salary bills month after month is really the best explanation I can offer for me applying.

Today, I have a better clue what MCS people do. Mostly because I do them. I still don’t know more than I have experienced because my intellectual curiosity really does not stretch out to the real world. I could spend hours and days sitting alone or discussing with like-minded people sci-fi or fantasy fiction, theorizing about possibilities and explanations, engaging in heated debates about logic and illogic in fiction, even pretend whole-heartedly to be an ant in an online ant colony. But it was not until I assumed charge as BDO, for example, that I asked: what does a BDO do? Which was because I had to now do them.

I realise therefore that I would never be the good officer I might have the potential to be. I am not afraid of hard work so I will always give my job my best. But I will never have that drive, I fear, that motivates some of my colleagues and peers to forge ahead and achieve distinction. Any sort of awards I have ever gotten have all been incidental. No one is ever more surprised than I whenever any office I hold gets recognition. I never aim for any. My main goal is to maintain status quo and fly under the radar. My only criteria and absolute discipline have been to never let standards slip. I like to think I share an affinity with Hamlet when he said he was only mad north-north-west; that when the wind blew southerly, I would always know a hawk from a handsaw.

I take quiet pride in being MCS because it has become my life intertwined. I do not fool myself, however, into thinking it makes me anything more or less than what I essentially am. When I am off-duty and sit down to watch an episode of Doctor Who or re-read the Hitchhiker’s Guide or engage in an online discussion of Harry Potter or some other similar engagement, I am simply Esther Leihang, something of a ridiculous gremlin.

Public Speaking in English

*Disclaimer: You won’t learn anything about public speaking in English from this blog.

Public Speaking is an art that can be learned. I definitely have improved over the years although I am by no means good at it. But every step is another step and it’s all good so I’m not complaining.

I learned public speaking at school. My first experience of it was back in Sacred Heart School Lunglei where they always made students handle Morning Assembly – a poem, bible reading, praying, etc. It taught us how to address an audience. It also taught me Ozymandias by P B Shelley which I still can recite to this day. Neat.

I never volunteered but over the course of my school life, there were multiple occasions where I stood in front of a bunch of people and spoke. A lot of it was gospel. As bad in public speaking as I was, I was chapel-in-charge at one point and I even played guitar in public then. The cringe. Or as church members would say, the Lord is never short of instruments (will make do if He can’t find one!).

I was extremely nervous the first time I spoke in Mizo in public. And it was a lecture, of all things. I was championing New Pension Scheme at the time and Bernie, Sawmtea and I had divided the course into three parts. I was hilariously bad at it but I was also leader so I couldn’t exactly not perform. Sometimes I’d start a sentence and not know how to end it and would just stand silently, heart thundering. I was bad at it in English and I had training in it; I had zero training in Mizo. Ugh. That was a bad experience. But I grew from it and I suppose I am grateful for it.

More opportunities developed for Mizo public speaking for me in time. I even publicly translated for my old DC Dr Aggarwal sometimes which was always a challenge because as a science guy, he often used science-y words. And we have very few science words in Mizo. You talk about photosynthesis and Mizo is stumped. We came up with a system where he prepared his speech beforehand or he told me the general gist and I’d mentally search for appropriate Mizo words. Anyhoo. I guess it worked. No one complained. Either that, or nobody listened.

As I was gaining confidence in Mizo public speaking, suddenly this week I found myself thrust into English public speech again. I rolled my eyes and my sleeves and performed. Because as much as it disconcerted me to speak in English after years of Mizo speaking again, I came into an epiphany which was that it didn’t matter all that much. Possibly 90% of the time, if people do comment on you, they’d comment on your accent. Not your grammar, not your material. And comments on accent I can deal with.

English is not my native language. I can only imitate what I’ve heard. And what I’ve heard and mimicked is a hotpot of choice accents – Kerala nuns, North Indians, UK and US films and of course, my own mother tongue. So yes, it was always going to be a jumble of all of these swirled together. And I won’t pronounce some words properly which is still okay because I’ve learned words in books – like quay. Not until the 2012 Doctor Who ep. The Angels Take Manhattan did I realise it was pronounced more like Key than Kway! Or that yatch does not require the ch to be pronounced because it’s not sounded out anyway. And that’s English words; in Irish, it becomes even more complicated like how in the world is Eoghan pronounced Owen, or Siobhan pronounced as She-von? I learned all these pronunciations from the screen, mind. So however and in whatever context I use them have to be influenced by what I’ve heard. My accent is therefore the least of my concerns and least cause of anxiety.

I always say you should not be too worried about English and how good or bad you are at it. It is good to improve because it very much is the medium through which a lot of us have experienced the wider world. Any gain in traction can only lead to better understanding and appreciation of literature, the arts and the sciences. Possibly commerce too. But otherwise, it is still a colonial hangover to judge people on how well they know the language.

Bottom line is people probably aren’t paying that much attention to you very much anyway so it’s OK!