Lata Am

There are things which are so obvious that you do not need to mention them always. And even if it is not written anywhere, people should not have any difficulty to understand (unless they are robots).

Let me share a story.

Me and my brother used to take English classes after school. Our teacher was a convent educated lady; while teaching English she used to give us lessons on discipline, etiquettes, lifestyle and all. She was a great teacher indeed, a bit short tempered though.

There was a boy in our class, Mithun, who used to do mistakes every now and then. We were learning Present Continuous Tense that day. After explaining the chapter, Aunty asked us to translate a sentence from Bengali to English:

Aunty: Lata bhaat khachchhe.

We wrote: Lata is eating rice.
Mithun wrote: Lata eats rice.

Aunty tried to explain with another example; and the conversation with Mithun went something like this:

Aunty: ami bhaat khachchhi 
Mithun: I am eating rice.
Aunty: Lata bhaat khachchhe
Mithun: Lata am eating rice.

Enough. Aunty could not hold anger any more – started shouting – “Lata am? Lata am? Hmm? Lata AAAM?”

When Aunty gave the other example, I was almost sure that Mithun would make this mistake. Maybe Aunty expected Mithun to have common sense!