Yeah I was usually at the top in English and sucked at Hindi, but mainly because teachers and available reading material sucked, and street Hindi in Jamshedpur is very different from ICSE textbook Hindi. I think I’d have been writer-level decent with the right teachers.
Yeah we’re all middle class. But also Hindi teachers tend to be depressed angry people who take it out in class on kids. All mine were kinda psychos. The lack of respect for what they do gets to them.
Worst part is they are forced to teach a bureaucratic version nobody speaks. So it’s nobody’s favorite subject. But if they did something fun like assign Hindi movie analysis for homework, all would love it. I mean we voluntarily did things like memorize gabbar’s sholay speech.