The Auscillating Indian: Why you need to hold your ‘Mother’ Tongue!

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.

The Auscillating Indian: Year 2019: A Tale of Two Countries

We are heading or rather rolling fast towards the close of 2019. This year will go down as part of a critical, whirlwind phase in my life. It has sent my happily, cocooned and quotidian existence from a cluttered, noisy and native habitat to an alien, silent, cold (read bone-chilling freeze zone) and barely populated city, across the Indian Ocean. 2019 was the year I moved from India to Australia- from one capital Delhi to another, Canberra. Eight months down the line, I am immensely proud of the way I have adapted from a very well-habituated life to one that continues to spring surprises. I have certainly made a substantial transition from being a senior professional at most organisations I have worked with in the past 14 years to turning student and learning at the basic professional level at an age when most people have achieved stability in their workplace. It’s been a highly schizophrenic professional life, almost a double life one might say as I continued to contribute as a journalist/blogger to Inchin Closer which takes an in-depth view to the crucial relationship between two of the world’s largest economies India and China. I also regularly lend my services as a copyeditor to numerous clients, including multinational companies of trillion-dollar worth. One of the perks of working with such companies is frequent trips to the US if that is something one enjoys. However, my move to Aussie shores meant I have had to let go of such an opportunity once this year so when it came up again barely five months after I had moved base to Canberra, I could not refuse. So there I was hardly settled in one foreign country with bag and baggage and packing away for a month to another! Thankfully, my trip to San Francisco mid-year was welcomed with pleasant weather and wonderful sunsets. I am also grateful that the largely official trip gave me the time to explore the local sights and sounds, experience Silicon Valley culture and check out the local attractions given it was my first trip. Generous colleagues and hospitable old batchmates came to my rescue to ensure I had a very pleasant trip indeed and am tempted to go back again.

This brings me to answering a question I have often been asked now that I have seen a slice of life in both the US and Australia. How are the two countries different or similar? Why would I prefer living in one and not the other? Are all foreign countries welcoming to Indians? Is it possible to lead the good life in both? Let me try and reflect on some of these very relevant queries. It’s an open secret that everyone in India who aspires to become an “NRI” first thinks of the US. For millions of Indians settled there, the progressive mindset, growth opportunities and good money have been enough reasons to make the move. For someone who has never really been that ambitious in life, these were not enough to make me follow suit. I have been very happy in home territory and while I like travelling, settling in a foreign land and calling it home was not something I could relate to.

 
So why would I or someone move to Australia? The clickbait for me was my only sister living here who has been a living proof of how one can live away from one’s motherland and still nurture a sense of belonging in another geography. Australia is a country for those who are seeking peace and an easygoing life in a fairly liberal and naturally bountiful setting. Australians are not born to live corporate lives or work their youth in to making billions before they retire at 40. They have an innate tendency to veer towards nature- toddlers will be seen taking to the waves at three, every youngster will know kayaking or play footie, their daddies will be shooting a racket ball out of the court come spring and every grandparent will own a garden they can nurture in their twilight years and a sprawling alfresco area where they can take in the beach or mountain view depending on which city they live! So much so that it is very common to see Australians settled for years in the bustling cities of Sydney or Melbourne to migrate to quieter and slower cities or regions in their middle years for a better, more engaging family life. The hunky-dory ‘Aussie’ life is such a lure that whether you are a migrant from Britain or Afghanistan, it is reason enough to make you come here. This often gets construed as ‘laziness’ or a ‘laissez faire attitude’ for identifying people Down Under. This is a common misunderstanding as Australia has some of the best liveable cities in the world (Melbourne and Sydney are ranked at second and third places in the ‘The world's 10 most liveable cities in 2019’) and scores high at 11^th position in the World Happiness Report which is a survey of 156 nations by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. This is simply because people here choose to opt out of the rat race before they regret wasting the best years of their lives in running after a pipe dream.

Americans on the other hand, are enterprising, charged with a zest to make the most of what their peak years can offer and grab at every opportunity to prove their worth. These are two kinds of people, and I don’t think one can judge one to be superior to the other. It is a choice that people make either way and as long as they feel up to it and are happy going with it, so be it. One may find the Silicon Valley too staid and San Francisco a bit too glamorous for one’s taste. Canberra for a lot of people smells of bureaucracy and politics but I choose to believe there is more to the city than meets the eye. Yes, it is wintry for over eight months of the year but it is also hilly, green, simple (almost country-like in its lifestyle) and packed with all the advantages of an urban landscape. High standard education, low crime rate and a thriving family life are good enough reasons for me to have made the move. I have no idea if this is where I will be for the rest of my life as I have learnt not to plan too far, too soon from past experience. So find your own reason to migrate to a country and find out why it best suits you in the first place, rather than seeing how it generally tempts or has tempted others. Personally, I feel Australians and Americans overall are very friendly and exhibit a healthy respect for diversity but while an Australian may have a fabulous sense of humour and enjoy a good joke over a frothing mug of beer, an American is more likely to put up a stand-up comedy act and make some money out of it!