Indian Gothic

Tess and I doing our best American Gothic imitation. 

This past week as my school was having exams, I further took part in the filming of a biopic on Edward Sargent, who was one of the missionaries instrumental in setting up the education system that is widely used in the southern part of Tamil Nadu, where there is a surprising number of Christian Indians. Surprising to me at least as I was not aware of this particular subset of society here.

One of the things that I had to do was to “deliver” a sermon in Tamil to a modest congregation in a small village south of Tirunelveli. I had transliterated the four-page sermon and read it through twice in Tamil and twice in English as the cameras were rolling. Ultimately, the scene will be dubbed over by a native Tamil speaker, by I agreed to read it in Tamil so that it at least would look like my lips might be moving correctly. In addition to the sheer fact that Tamil is EXTREMELY difficult for a non-native speaker to pronounce, I had nearly 100 small children in the congregation as well. But, I pulled through, having nearly lost my voice after the four read throughs.

Well, that didn’t go too poorly, I had thought to myself. Then, later, Handel and I were talking and he told me that he had hyperlexia, which means that he is able to read at phenomenal speeds, but unfortunately does not retain the meaning, something that has obviously caused him much distress throughout his life.

One of the attributes of his condition is that he can pick up a perfect accent. I had wondered about this before him telling me this. Handel’s English is as native as any Englishman I have ever heard, and he has only lived in England for a while. Most Indians have very, very thick accents, so it was something quite noticeable. Apparently, he was speaking like that in two months after being there. I will re-iterate, he never makes a mistake, it is truly remarkable.

Then, he goes on to tell me something that I wish he had not said. In addition to being able to learn accents and languages like that, his Tamil is considered perfect pronunciation and delivery. Now, this wouldn’t mean all that much to me at the time, except for the fact that Handel is the camera man and had to listen to my butchering of the Tamil sermon in his earphones as the altar was mic’d to him.

Take home message of that experience, sometimes it is best not to know certain thing before you try new things. Had I known this about Handel, that would have been much more difficult to pull off. However, Handel is a very gracious person and just laughed at me in good nature when I told him how I felt. So, yet another fun day in India with lots of twists and turns and surprises, both good and challenging.

I also have to commend these kids in the shoot. It took nearly an hour to do the read through and they were incredible. I obviously am not speaking about all Indian children as a whole, but my experience here in Tamil Nadu is that these kids are really some of the sweetest, most well-behaved kids that I have ever been around. Always curious and ready for a big smile, it has been a real joy to be working with them both at the school and on the film set.