Fluency in English can work wonders in north Indian towns. It is the ultimate benchmark of sophistication, the logic being that if you can speak fluent English, you must have been to a ‘convent’ school, and if you have been to a ‘convent’ school, you must have had a decent education and must be hailing from a fairly decent family. The logic, which is not entirely irrational, is so deeprooted that even when you converse with people in chaste Hindi, and once they come to know that you belong to the English-speaking lot, they tend to reply with whatever phrases of English they have at their
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