The perfect early birthday gift

Wearing the spectacular cotton sari gifted to me by my artist friend lent me an air of invincibility while taking the bilingual exam last week. Pic/Rosalyn D’Mello

The night before I was to take the bilingual exam last week, I was only nerves. I should have spent the previous week continuing to self-study, I should have been practising writing 80 to 100-word compositions in German and Italian so that I wouldn't feel too flustered. Instead, I travelled to the Netherlands with our toddler and spent a chunk of every minute that he was asleep hanging out with Bhasha and Hanya, the two artists who were on the residency whom I went to visit. I decided at some point I would have to contend with the fact that I knew whatever I managed to learn and metabolise. It was too late to cram my head with anything new. In any case, that is the purpose of an exam, to test your existing knowledge on a subject. Failure would simply mean it was deficient. Nothing more, nothing less. This is an exam that at least 50 per cent fail. I opted to take it not only because it was free, but because it could serve to motivate me to accelerate the pace of my learning. In that sense, I had already succeeded. The last three months I had easily spent an average of two hours a day studying Italian and sometimes German.

Still, I needed a confidence boost. What better than a sari! As I was leaving the residency apartment in Wassenaar, Bhasha gifted me a spectacular cotton sari she had bought directly from a weaver and off the loom. She said she had watched the rani pink silk pallu being attached to the green cotton that formed the rest of the sari during her residency in Hampi. The rani pink looked so mesmerising, I wanted it to hug my skin, so I brought it around my neck so it could make my colour pop. A turquoise eyeliner was the only make-up I had time for. I couldn't spare a moment to gaze into the mirror to see if the look was complete, but I felt so good. I felt a little invincible. I felt the way I never feel when I wear western attire. I got lucky and managed to hop onto an earlier, direct train, which meant I had time for a leisurely cappuccino and brioche.

I arrived more than 15 minutes early at the centre, I took a seat close to the speakers so that I could be at an advantage for the listening portion. Then, I did something I'm not so skilled at - I ‘held' myself through the duration of the exam. When I sensed I was beginning to feel either overwhelmed or demotivated, I acted like my own cheerleader. I talked to myself quietly inside my head. I told my fragile self that it was okay to fail, that I had already made great strides. That the purpose of learning these languages was not to prove anything to anybody but to empower myself so that, as a feminist and an immigrant, I could have the power to advocate for myself. That was what this was about. Of course, I was the only person of colour in the room. There were about five or six others, all white, all definitely native speakers of at least one of the two languages, which meant that I had already had to work harder than all of them to arrive at this point. Four years ago, I knew no German and no Italian, and here I was fully capable of conjugating verbs in almost every tense in both languages.

How did the test go? I felt super confident about almost all my responses to both the audio and the written tests. I hadn't felt that way when I had taken the A2-level test last year. Was I happy with my written texts? Not really. Had I practised more, they could have been better. But I reminded myself that I not only had a full-time job besides other writing commitments, I was also a full-time mother and a lecturer at the university. Showing myself that empathy helped me get through the feeling of panic that momentarily swept over me. Finally, I arrived at the portion I was most dreading, the oral exam. For this component, you are asked to pick an envelope from a box. The examiner leads you to another room where you have 10 minutes to prepare a two-minute piece about a specific theme. Unfortunately, I got ‘the cinema', a place I haven't been to in centuries. I chose to speak about the general experience of going to a cinema in Italian and about one of my favourite films in German. The two examiners are allowed to ask two questions each and one is expected to switch between the two languages. I stuck to superficial talk, afraid of messing up grammar if I got into too many complexities.

I spent the weekend in a state of suspense, unsure whether I would pass or fail. I knew I had done potentially well with the listening and comprehension components, but the composition and the oral portions had made me feel fragile.

Around noon on Monday, I was emailed the result. I read it in Italian. I had not only passed, I had aced it with a 90.751 on 100 in German and 85.501 on 100 in Italian. This is easily the best birthday present I could possibly gift myself!

Deliberating on the life and times of every woman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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