The fun part about moving to a new country is
how you suddenly seem to be thrown in to a multicultural melting pot. So you
are neighbour to a Chinese person, your colleagues are Australian, Japanese, Korean,
Phillipino, Samoan, British and Bangladeshi, while you can dig in to a new
cuisine every time you hit the restaurants with authentic chefs dishing up a
recipe with flair. This often brings your language abilities to the test
because here it’s not about speaking English fluently but also understanding
accents, observing cultural sensitivity and closing the gaps in communication
with people for whom English might be a second language. I find it amusing how
we Indians are always so keen to prove our English language speaking skills to
every foreigner we meet when in countries like Germany and France, locals will
probably snub you for speaking in English and not their native language. Unlike
people from other nationalities, we don’t take enough pride in mastering our
identity and are a bit too eager to embrace the ‘western’. Alas, we have paid a
very high price for this mass adoption.
In spite of Indians speaking in 19,500
languages and dialects as mother tongues, the emphasis on English as the
language of administration, educational progress and professional, economic and
social status, has meant that we have largely cold-shouldered our origins. We millennials
can barely decipher literature written in our mother tongues anymore, most parents
and children insist on speaking English at home meaning that even verbal
language skills are slowly becoming defunct. Precisely the reason I have
immense respect for those who are genuinely making an effort to preserve their
rich linguistic heritage through cinema, art, culture, heirlooms, literature
and education. I remember being taunted for taking up Hindi and not opting for
the more sophisticated French as a second language option in college at
St.Xavier’s, Mumbai. I admire people who speak a foreign language but often, it
becomes a criterion for judging how ‘cool’ or ‘accomplished’ you are. In my
office in Delhi, there were two distinct groups that hung out together, the
English-speaking and the non-English speaking ones. I once invited people from
both groups to a party at my place and it was hilarious how they all ended up
drunk and dancing to cheesy Hindi item numbers and thumping Bhangra beats together!
So if language can tear people apart, it also has the power to bring people
together.
If I were to claim I am a linguistic expert in Maithili
you’d wonder which planet I am from. Maithili, what’s that again? Thankfully,
my parents insisted on us speaking in our native languages at home so my sister
and me were already speaking two languages before we joined kindergarten. When my
cousin brother in Nagpur, Maharashtra graduated in Pali literature, no one in
the family raised an eyebrow. So yes, as a mother it is imperative that I pass
on the wealth of language diversity in my family to my children, in the hope
that they can carry on the tradition.
Here in Australia, when someone generally
comments on how much language diversity he sees in my motherland, it makes me
proud but also reminds me with a sense of guilt how I stutter every time I have
to read the Bengali script even though it’s my mother tongue. Or how my Marathi
has got stilted ever since I moved up to north India after marriage, being out
of touch with people who speak it every day. And when it comes to writing in
these languages? I am sorry, is that even needed these days?
Truth be told, I love English, a passion
developed and nurtured through reading countless books in the language since I
learnt to read. Blame it on my English-medium ‘Convent upbringing’ but I went
on to graduate in English literature and realised very early in the day that,
even my thoughts originate in the language. It has helped me find my voice in the
professional sphere of journalism today and I will be eternally grateful to it
for ensuring that I can seamlessly carry forward my skills to any English-speaking
country.
Does this mean I wave goodbye to my roots? NO!
We can still be Indian and very much preserve our traditions while on foreign
shores. Bilingual citizens are more proficient and score higher on intellect, acceptance
of diversity in the workplace and communication. I continue to devour films in
all regional Indian languages, spreading the net to encompass songs that I love
irrespective of what language they are worded in. As an NRI, I regularly attend
multicultural events, speak to fellow Indians in native languages and insist on
correcting my child’s pronunciation every time she may stutter on a word.
Up on my wish list is learning one more Indian
and one foreign language, may be even post retirement as learning a new
language is fodder for the brain and a way of exercising those grey cells. Why
stop at speaking four, reading and writing in three and listening to twelve?
Thanks to my linguistic skills, I can speak to a Bangladeshi in Bengali and converse
with a North Indian in Hindi even in a foreign land. It cements your relations
by bringing you closer to other people, while sharing an immediate fellowship,
lending a whiff of intimacy and confidentiality to your banter. So next time
you walk up to a person whose mother tongue you know you can speak, try
replying back in the same. It won’t bring your economic or social status down a
few notches, but it will win you more smiles, warmth and genuine friendships
than you may realise.
