The Crisis of Language

I have no mother tongue. Why do I say so? Because my mother did not teach me the language her mother taught her. As for the fact, neither did my father. They both had theirs, different languages, and conversed in them within their own family circles. Over the years, never did I put a conscious effort to learn the script or tried to have a command over speech. It’s too sad for me to accept, almost feels like a crisis, and a shame, that I can understand and feel my languages, but can’t speak them.

I would be romanticising if I say Hindi was like the towel of pure cotton which I used to wipe out my sweat breaking due to lack of languages. The same cotton, which in its pure form gives the sensation of simplicity, but in form of Khadi prescribes power and resilience. Hindi could have stood on those parameters, but English, the imported yarn, kept standing there, and Hindi could also not find its due place and respect.

My place, Bihar, is home to three major languages, namely Maithili (with Bajjika and Angika variances, the latter should have been my mother tongue), Magahi (with Pataniya variance), and Bhojpuri (with Chhapariya variance). I have always felt that richness of languages spoken at a place tell stories of culture and are evidence of an undeniable past. This fondness and respect has led me to be attracted to Japanese and Urdu as well. I find both of them beautiful, with rich visual depiction through even simplest of words, along with elegance of the strokes in their characters. My heart races to learn them, and in a way try to understand the culture and history they carry within themselves, but am again stopped at the thought, have I even learnt what’s already there at the heart.

They say, and I have heard, that the greatest thoughts and their honest expression can only occur when it’s in one’s own language. Can I claim Hindi to be mine, when I spend days without having even a glance at it? Can I make it mine unless I have read, and thus lived a bit, those who have over the years contributed and made it what it is? And all this when there has been conscious effort through out my life to improve upon English, but too little for Hindi?

The access of a lot that the world has to offer today is through English language. It’s definitely a necessity, no denying. But now, in a way, I have settled to the notion that I have learnt to speak and write the English which I should know, to be able to express myself adequately, if not completely. And also want to remind myself constantly that I should now stop running behind a foreign dream and accept what has always been here, beside me, inside me, but whom I have been ignoring for far too long now. It’s time to put in conscious efforts.

PS – It’s ironical that I write this blog in English. Have to do a lot of account balancing for Hindi.

The picture below has been taken from a book “Post Mandal politics in Bihar” by Sanjay Kumar.