My family can’t understand my English problem. They are all very good at English. My sister could have become an English professor if she wanted but decided to study maths instead. Even my older brother, who is doing a PhD in physics and is not as smart as my sister, used to get really high marks in English. It’s hard to explain doing badly in English when that’s the only language you speak.

When I said I wanted to go abroad to study marine biology, my parents were like, hmm. They looked shady and wouldn’t give me a straight answer. My brother Ajay didn’t reply to my text for three days. He was like that even before he went to the UK. Then I got a text: “bro, you have MIT ambitions but I am not sure even a local Bangalore college will take you with your marks.” I almost threw my phone from the balcony. What a brother. What a family.

After first term, when I brought it up again, my mother said, “Okay, let me think about it,” and then she drove off to work. That weekend she said, “Michael, if you really want to go to the US, we have to hire an education consultant.” Nobody said aloud what I knew they were thinking. Ajay and Aisha never needed education consultants to get into whatever university they wanted to get into. I never tell anyone what a freak Aisha is because people will think I am lying. One university in the US actually paid her plane tickets to get her to come for an interview. Actually. She flew to the US, got treated poshly, rejected them and went to Germany instead. Now Aisha has an Indian boyfriend in Australia, whom she met when she was going up a mountain somewhere in Europe. Ajay might have a girlfriend. I don’t know. It took me a long time to find out about Aisha’s boyfriend, that too indirectly, and not because she told me. Because we are the only three family members in India who don’t have a three-member WhatsApp group. I would never text Aisha for anything. I don’t think she even remembers that she has a second brother.

The education consultant was as bad as my dentist. She looked at my class ten marks and rolled her eyes at my mother. My mother pretended to look strict and rolled her eyes at me. I sat in the black swivel chair and thought for the millionth time about what a surfboard would feel like under my chest and stomach when I first wade into the water. The light would be just perfect. I could imagine my hands in the water. One of my Fortnite friends who has lived there told me California is colder than I think. But, I know, I just know the sea is going to be warm, just right, just perfect, like a liquid bed. When I surfaced from the wave, my mother and the consultant lady had agreed that I would have to take coaching classes four days a week for the next year. I knew it was coming so I didn’t feel bad until I realized I had to take English coaching also. On Sunday mornings. English classes. No more football.

I looked at my mother, who had clearly forgotten her plan to look strict and was looking sadly at me.

“Sundays. What about football?” I said quietly.

The consultant woman jumped up, as if I had said something terrible like, “What about my regular Sunday morning plan of getting high on Meow Meow while wearing no clothes?”

“Young man, your English marks are so bad there is no chance, zero chance, hundred per cent zero chance that you will crack TOEFL. And what about your personal statement? Who is going to write that while you play football?”

I didn’t dare look directly at her. I was afraid I might see her nose hair or spit or something gross that she produced while being angry. That would make me want to really get high.

My mother is really useless. Here I was arranging my face to look extra sad and repentant so we could get out of there, while she was definitely trying not to laugh at the angry consultant lady. She hustled me out of there and took me to Bangarpet Chaat. I didn’t try to argue with her about missing football. She knew that in the last six years I had never missed a game except in the beginning of the pandemic. No use talking about it. If I wanted to get away from my parents and not be the last useless child at home without a life, without having any fun, then I had to sort out my marks.

I did it. No one, not my parents or Ajay or even Aisha could say I didn’t try. I went to all the classes. I didn’t miss one. I didn’t complain. When occasionally the classes were online, I didn’t miss those either. I even kept my camera on. I had so little time for gaming that Piglu cursed me regularly. The one Saturday evening I got online, Piglu got so excited he somehow convinced me to play Minecraft with him. We don’t really play Minecraft anymore. But his younger brother Nayan is really into it now. At some point we had a zombie after us. Piglu and I got away but Nayan didn’t. He yelled, “Piglu! Don’t leave me. I am your brother! How can you leave me?” Piglu and I were so charged up, we didn’t register his yelling for a few minutes. But he was so loud I had to take my headphones off. He was blasting my eardrums. Then Piglu started laughing at Nayan because he was doing all this dying-dying-dead-zombie-got-me drama at his brother who was sitting on the same sofa. I started laughing also but I don’t know why I felt like crying at the same time thinking of Nayan being left behind in a war. Imagine someone having to make a choice like that. What if my girlfriend and I were surfing and there was a shark? What if I had to save either my girlfriend or myself? What if she had to decide whether to save herself or me?

My science and maths marks got somewhat better. My English marks were still crap. After three months, the education consultant lady sent my mother a stinker of an email. My mother was furious when she showed it to my father. My father is on my mother’s side if she has a problem with anyone but him. That’s how they started hanging out in engineering college – my father wanted to solve all her problems and my mother likes to keep everyone busy. My father was all ready to drive to Lavelle Road and give the consultant a kick. My mother distracted him and sent him off on a task with the residents’ association before he realised that I was the one who needed to be kicked. She knew I was on the landing and could hear everything. After he left, I came downstairs and said, “I don’t know what to do.” Obviously, my mother didn’t either. I just couldn’t write.

A week later, my mother found a whole new coaching class for my English. Before I joined the new classes, I got one Sunday morning with football. Just one. Everyone was so happy to see me after three months, but I could see they hadn’t missed me the way I had missed them. The way I had missed that muddy field and ripped-up nets and all their stupid aces. Two girls had joined – an update that no one had bothered to tell me. They were okay players even though they were tiny. One of them barely came up to my shoulders. No complaints, but no one had told me? I couldn’t understand it. I felt a little bad about it the whole week.

On Saturday night, before the first new English class, I told my mother that I didn’t want to go. Obviously, I was in an extra stupid mood because I said it in front of my father. My father whipped around like a cobra and said in Telugu, “When you wanted 10,000-rupee running lessons I didn’t tell you to bloody run, one leg at a time. It’s free! Now you need English tuition. Imagine telling anyone that you need English tuition.”

I don’t know how I have not broken a bottle on my father’s head by now. These lessons that he is talking about happened a long time ago! Two years ago! For three months, my best friend Piglu and I had gone to these weekend classes for running. The coach over there, Ankush, made us faster permanently.

On the way, I got a WhatsApp message from my mother: “This English teacher is like Ankush. You will like her.” My mother had some serious skills. Right away I could see the new coaching class was not a regular one. The teacher, Rathi, looked normal, not impressive or good-looking like Ankush but when we did grammar, I understood it. Then we had speaking practice, which was also fine. One guy sitting next to me was on his phone most of the time. He had it hidden somehow between his lap and his desk. We were only twelve people, unlike my other classes which easily had fifty. No one was from my school, which I felt so relieved about.

Before starting the writing session, Miss Rathi said, “I am going to tell you a secret. If you write simply, if you write your thoughts clearly, in a way that your younger brothers or sisters can understand, you will do well on the TOEFL. It doesn’t have to be fancy, I promise.” I saw that the guy with the phone, Riteish, had the same expression as me. He hadn’t spoken once in class and was still fiddling with his phone. I looked around at the rest of the class who also looked mildly unhappy. When I saw their faces, I thought to myself, These people must be as bad at English as I am. Awesome. I closed my eyes and thought about floating on my back in the Pacific Ocean.

Excerpted with permission from ‘Discord’ by Nisha Susan in Romance In My Coffee, Harper Collins India.

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