Last night while doing some laundry I found this short report I wrote back in India. Rabindranath Tagore founded the university at Santiniketan where I did my Indian M.A., which was quite a different experience for me.
In this brief paper, I employed what I used to call my “international” English. Instead of an abundance of style and flourish, I went for clarity and the avoidance of Canadian jargon.* Because Indian English is strongly influenced by a sort of old-world UK style, I didn’t hesitate to allow that to come through.
Not sure if this was a conscious dynamic of just happening back then. These days I am far more aware of what form I’m writing in… just as a singer knows when they’re singing a ballad, a jingle, or a rock anthem.
As you can see, I’ve been interested in spirituality for quite some time, and overall, my work was very well-received in India. In Canada, almost all of my professors were receptive to my ideas, as long as I wrote clearly—which I always did.
Only one professor in my entire academic career got really strange and became downright hostile when I wrote about psychology and spirituality. But writing for him and being in his class was a real struggle from day one. There was something terribly wrong in that class. And a sensitive person like myself could feel it in spades…
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* Something I find myself doing again with Google Translate.
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