by Rajesh Kumar
Summer 2004
Two years in a country like Canada definitely warrants a good-sized, contemplative write-up as this one. I've always wanted to share my thoughts and opinions on my first impressions about this globally chatted-about country. More importantly, I wanted to recount my experiences to my friends back in Dubai. While I was pondering on how I could do it best, a familiar web-site presented itself on my browser: youngtimes.co.ae. "Voila!" I exclaimed, delighted to have found myself the solution. Young Times was an old bag to me: I remember writing a couple short-stories for the magazine in the past, and also once worked on a YT History web-site which I thought would serve as an online archive for past issues. Well, the rest is bygone, and now here I am again, all pepped to divvy-up, stain and scrutinize a cross-section of one branch of my past.
The last two years have been much more eventful than I would have ever dared to bet on. The journey has been wild, tough, fun-filled and exciting—all mixed together in a gigantic Super Sundae slush. My experiences have caused me to think again, and with increasing pressure from people to know how life is like here in Canada, I have decided to elaborately articulate some thoughts I've been holding on to for the past couple of months.
First and foremost, I'd like to put forward a disclaimer: Although Canada is a large country (it is the second largest country after all), I have lived and spent only two years in a relatively small city off the the West Coast of the North American continent. I may make hasty and fallacious generalizations on the way, but as humans, we usually find it difficult to avoid connecting our personal experiences to the experiences of our community at large. So, yes, don't take my words as your newly printed Bible. A pinch of salt—or even an entire shaker—might come handy sometime.
We happened to move into Canada on a beautiful August's day. We left the scorching heat of Dubai far behind us and were greeted with a mild and pleasant atmosphere as soon as we were just a few hundred kilometers from the Pacific Coast. While I was accustomed to the vast stretches of honey colored and intricately patterned sand-dunes in and around the famous Dubai International Airport, the sight of lush green vegetation and sky-lit seas around the Vancouver International Airport was certainly a formidable one to behold.
My first thought on landing here was: Was this really Canada? Okay, there was this signboard in the distance that said "Vancouver" in bold. And from my pre-immigration research, I was certain Vancouver was some part of Canada. But I found it hard to ingest the facts. Canada didn't quite match the colorful panorama I had been forming in my mind many months prior to my arrival here. Everything was so flashy and so shiny, it was like the whole world was filtered through a kaleidescope. I became suspicious that someone had cleverly duped me. I was promptly greeted by Mr. Paranoia who welcomed me to have a drink with him at his lounge. I began to remember that Tamil movie where two young gentlemen from Chennai, in search of jobs, paid to get themselves tricked; they thought they were headed on their way to Dubai to make the money of their lives, but eventually found themselves someplace in the whereabouts of downtown Cochin, with only the bay and a few coconut trees to keep them company. Such was my state of mind.
So yes, we landed, and things went fine. It was after all, I figured, Canada. Things resumed their original pace, and I began going to school soon. School, as bizarre as it may sound, was in the morning, and although I found this terribly confusing to begin with, I quickly adjusted myself to my new time-table. Frankly, the presence of members of the opposite gender in the same shift as mine scared the bones out of me, but we boys are pretty good at maintaining homestasis, n'est ce pas?
To be candid, just two days in school reminded me of those good ol' days, when we used to sit relaxed on our comfy sofas, the air-conditioner on, and watch the Small Wonder on Star Network. (Footnote: Nostalgia gets the better bit of me. Granted we don't have air-conditioners anymore, but we do have fire-places as replacements.) I used to dream of being in such an environment like the kids in the show were in, but little did I know back then that I would literally find myself in such an environment one day. It's a strange feeling, believe me. Lockers? Yes. Not carrying books back home? Yes. Teachers are your friends? Yes. Halloween nights? Yes. School dances? Yes. And the list goes on. Think Small Wonder again, and that would pretty much sum up all I had hoped to convey in this paragraph.
The second thing that struck me as odd, and even went as far as to throw me out of my mind's senses, was the unbinding prevalence of multi-culturalism here. It was as if people from all over the world had encircled me, and were revolving around me in a swift ballet. My friend up there is a Russian, that nerd doing math is Chinese, the group of garrulous girls crowded there are Indian (like that needs saying), and the gentleman beside me is from Freetown, Sierra Leone. In Dubai, I had been educated at the Indian High School for 11 straight years. Back then, I was under the false notion that it was a good thing to mix with people solely from your own culture and nationality. Still worse, I was blinded into belief that it really was an advantage to study in a "shift" system, or more generally, a single-sex classroom.
My misconceptions were quickly shattered within a month of school-going in this large but scantily populated country. I realized I had been missing three-fourths the competition I had been seeking by interacting "only with the boys." Even today, my biggest competitor in Mathematics and the core sciences is a female—not a male as one would have you believe.
The only thing I can reliably comment on is the education system here. I really have spent only one year in a true Canadian school, so if I commented based on those experiences, I would be committing the fallacy of biased sampling. Last year, I was accepted into the internationally acclaimed educational programme known as the International Baccalaureate. This programme exists in almost every country in the world including India and the UAE. Abbreviated IB, this system is well-known for its international community and is infamous for its broad and tough syllabus. One area worth commenting on is my study of History and Astronomy under this superb programme. To be honest, I strongly believe and advocate that History and Astronomy must be compulsive courses to be studied by every high school student. The two subjects are so profound and have such far-reaching usefulness in everyday practicality that they help stretch one's mind beyond limits. And believe me, once this stretch has been attained, it is next to impossible to get back your mind in its pristine state. If Astronomy widens your mind in the x-dimension, History stretches your intellect in the y-dimension. And if you wanted something for the z-dimension, consider taking up a semester of Philosophy or maybe even Anthropology.
The other thing that warrants talking about is the ubiquity of the Internet. Access to a cable connection has completely altered the way I perceive the Internet. I can almost instantaneously look up stuff when in doubt, and I use the Internet for almost every single research assignment I have to deal with. It is fast, clever, and even serves as a ready-made filter-funnel mechanism for the kind of information I'm seeking. The entire school is itself an Internet lobby, with the exception of perhaps the school canteen. But many cafeterias and canteens are equipped with wireless technology these days. So if you had a laptop with a wireless card, you could be playing Internet Hearts on Yahoo! while at the same time sipping coffee and munching on your croissant...
Another little thing that I can't resist penning down is this: Do not underestimate the power of language. Being able to speak good English, I've realized, is a wonderful asset both here and perhaps anywhere in the world. The facts have been further reinforced with English steadfastly becoming the language of the Internet. English is the national language of Canada; hence, it was natural of me to expect the standards to be high. And I was right. As I soon began making new friends, I was quickly stereotyped as an Easterner who was incapable of speaking decent English. My counsellor was almost on the brink of signing me up for "english-from-scratch" courses. But the minute people heard me speak, they started looking at me with a new pair of eyes. Sometime when I make it to Dubai, I'd like to individually extend my gratitude to each one of my English teachers for having imbued in me a high level of communicative skills. Over here, I've come across some exceptionally talented English teachers, most notably my current teacher. English has always been my favorite language and period at school, and now it has only taken a step forward.
Of course, it takes a while to get adjusted to the accent and the arcane slang that is employed here. Being in IB was a good thing, as you're almost always expected to speak in a parlance that is common to all. It also allowed me to stay away from those students who literally spewed spit on me with their vulgarity. I opted for 'World Literature' as my English branch, and this really was a pleasant class to be in. It becomes all-the-more interesting if you're blessed with an especially talented teacher who has a knack for converting even the greatest of boring literary works into an exciting suspense novel. We've looked at several pieces of literature from around the world including Russian, Chilean and Japanese. It's quite a pity that we sometimes are capable of reading only the interpretations, i.e. the translations, as opposed to the real work. The fun part about our English class was that everyone was in there because they wanted to be in there, not because they were compelled to. This very fact turns the tables 180 degrees around.
I have suffered several weird looks from the faces of my friends for employing British vocabulary. My teacher, who presumably has European roots, comments that my compositions remind him of the typical 40's-type, Anglo-Saxon derived colloquialism. But really, I can't help it. For instance, I frequently used to employ words like 'trolley' and 'biscuits' but these words do not exist in the Canadian lingo. Fortunately however, they have equivalent replacements. You could say, for example, 'cart' and 'cookies' instead, and everyone will be happy. If you do happen to use any of these esoteric words, you'll be warmly greeted with looks of confusion and incomprehension. But I'm momentarily pleased because my favorite "whatsup" still exists wherever I go. Spellings pose no peculiar problems; the Canadians have managed to not adopt the American spellings all that much.
If you live in Canada, you'll need to learn to do and say a few things, just to be part of the society. Of particular interest (just because it makes me cackle wildly) is the great exclamation that you'll need to make whenever you happen to pass a gas station. Gas, by the way, is the replacement word for petrol (or gasoline), and does not refer to natural gas, as one would have me believe.
And there is the common misconception about the prevalence of racism in and around this country. The talk of racism is the biggest joke in our class (initiated by me of course). 'Canadian racism' is the most appropriate oxymoron I've ever coined in my life.
Many years ago when I was back in Dubai, I had had a teacher who was explaining to us the way the education system worked in the West. His name was Mr. Fernando and occupies the higher echelons on my list of best teachers. I paraphrase his words: "You know in the West, things are different. Take for instance Geography class. How many students would understand what a canyon or a fjord was if they just studied it from a text-book?" He was squarely right, but he continued: "In the schools in the West, if the teacher planned on teaching about fjords and their features for the day, you wouldn't be taken by surprise to see a line of buses waiting outside to take the kids to an actual site where they could witness the breathtaking sight of a fjord for themselves. And that is education, my boys. I wouldn't be surprised if all of the kids remembered what a fjord was and looked like until the end of their lives, just because of that single excursion."
I couldn't feel his conviction then, but today, I see and understand the profound meaning his words held. He couldn't have been any more right. If we studied Romeo & Juliet this week, it would be absolutely natural of us to expect seeing a Romeo & Juliet play (enacted by highly talented casts) at the nearby local theatre.
In Biology class, if you were studying Blood Typing, you'd have an opportunity to pinch yourself, take a blood sample, and with the help of a blood-testing kit, be able to determine your own blood type. If you were studying DNA, you'd have an opportunity to make artificial DNA strands yourself, which would allow you to observe its intricate double-helix structure. And you wouldn't have to obtain a visa, cross mountains, rivers and oceans before you get to your lab; you'd simply have to walk across to the back counter. That is the proximity of laboratories.
The other day we were looking for mathematical evidence in nature. I was thinking of Fibonacci's series in broccoli stalks. Some others were thinking about the trigonometric patterns in the rise and fall of tides. But the irony was that we were studying about nature in a 4-walled, doors-closed, windows-closed classroom! The teacher, sensing our boredom, was quick to open the door for us, and we all ran out into the nearby field where we were exposed to true nature. You should have been there to hear the ideas that came out of students' minds after that!
On the same note, teachers use overhead projectors, colorful markers, computer simulations, movies, documentaries, and just about whatever they can lay their hands on to teach the topic in question. This is because teachers themselves know that if they kept rambling about the same topic for over an hour, they would be very effective at putting their students to a blissful mid-morning doze.
Of course, not everything is as nice and fancy as I might have made it sound, but beside these petty short-comings, my observable Canada is indeed a great place.
Permit me to wrap up with my greatest joy which is la saison de l'amour or spring. Back in Dubai, I used to be quite disheartened as we had only two seasons to play with: hot and cold. Over here, you actually have all the four seasons. And having four seasons is fun (T.S. Eliot wouldn't have concurred), because each season is not at all alike any other. Spring is my favorite. It really is a terrific sight to see all those bright flowers in bloom. Believe me, it's like it is in the movies: the tulips, the daffodils, the daisies, the periwinkles, and even some pesky weeds that litter the entire city with their fragrance and earthly beauty. And this is none like the feeling I was previously exposed to by the artificiality of the flowers in fluorescence...
Rajesh can be contacted via electronic mail at rajesh@meetrajesh.com
Add comment | View Comments | Send email