English Vinglish

From Pokémon to Chandler Bing, my language lessons came with laugh tracks, late-night binges, and a remote control

- By Niraj Kakade

It’s pandemonium in Hadapsar, Pune’s New English School. The science teacher is waging a losing battle against the word thermocline—half in Hindi, half in Marathi, with a few brave attempts in English that don’t land quite right. The class finds her pronunciation hilarious. Chaos erupts. This is supposed to be an English-medium school, with ‘supposed to’ treated more like a casual suggestion than an ironclad rule. It isn’t some hallowed institution, nor one of those private schools where blackboards have been replaced with screens. It’s a no-frills, working-class school on Pune’s outskirts. The fees are Rs500—bumped to Rs700 by the time I left in 2010.

English wasn't a priority here. My classmates and I were chawl kids—some had parents who drove rickshaws, worked post office shifts, or pulled long hours as nurses. Mine were no different, caught up in separate hospital shifts. We weren't expected to speak English, let alone build futures around it. But with all this free time and almost no parental supervision, English had other plans for me. So did TV.

It started with Pokémon. Every afternoon, I'd rush home, glue myself to the TV, and watch Ash Ketchum scream battle commands in Hindi. “Pikachu, main tumhe chunta hoon!” (Pikachu I choose you) The words made sense, but the rhythm of it—the way the characters spoke, the urgency, the pauses—felt like another language entirely. And then came anime, subtitled. Suddenly, I wasn’t just watching, I was reading, syncing words with movements, filling in the gaps.

Of course, my dad had no interest in my linguistic enlightenment. Every evening, he'd kick me off the TV, reclaiming his throne for Aaj Tak and whatever high-octane Bollywood movie Set Max was serving that night. But after everyone fell asleep, I was back. This time, on Star World.

First, it was