Lost and Found - A Memoir

When you're someone who has spent a huge portion of your life moving around, whether it be countries or international schools, you get exposed to multiple languages and cultures. And in multiple ways, that exposure is rewarding. It can positively influence your thoughts, your perception of the world and your behaviour. I always regard learning languages as the most fun part about moving to a new place. It gives me a thrill when I get to learn new things in a foreign language; It’s almost as if I have cracked a code, or as if I have figured out the solution to a strenuous maths problem. 

Sometimes, I don’t even learn the entire language. Think of it as me picking up new souvenirs from each culture, but in the form of vocabulary. My friends and I would watch a tv-show in Norwegian, learn a few cool phrases in it, and bam! It becomes like our secret language, an inside reference only we know about, and we start to feel sä kult.

However, the thing I’ve realized about languages is that you need to be able to practice it often, whether its through oral or auditory or visual means. Otherwise, you slowly start to forget that language. 

For languages that I only know a few words in, that doesn't bother me too much. After a few months time, If I forget what ‘sä kult' meant in Norwegian, I could just look it up on an online translator and realize it meant ‘so cool’. Yet, this situation becomes completely different when it comes down to languages that I properly know how to communicate in. 

One of my fears used to be that I will soon forget how to communicate in Traditional Hindi, because after all this traveling around and learning new languages, in the end you will resort to speaking in English for the ease of communication. If I spend a majority of my time speaking in English with others and not practicing Hindi, I’ll start to forget how to speak it. And this used to be  a big deal for me, because I will always consider it as a part of my identity. 

This fear came into existence on afternoon when I was in India during my summer vacations, watching the television with all my maternal-side cousins and aunts. I was 14 years old at that time,   and I used to study in the UAE instead. We were watching a new episode of an Indian quiz gameshow, which is a replication of “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?”. The questions started to come onto the screen, and that’s when I realized that I was starting to forget Hindi. 

The host asked the contestants, “जल्द से जल्द शुरू, एक छात्र के जीवन के इन चरणों को सही क्रम में व्यवस्थित करें.” Following that, the options that showed up on screen were: A- प्राथमिक विद्यालय B- माध्यमिक विद्यालय C- बैचलर कोर्स D- बाल विहार. All the contestants were supposed to choose the right order of words. 

I got confused. I didn’t know what those words were. I wasn’t fast enough at reading through it either. I could make out some words, like “start” and “life” and “right”. But they didn’t form a coherent sentence. They were just jumble of words. Yet, my cousins beside me were yelling out sequences of letters. 

“It’s DABC! Pre-school and then Primary school!” 

“No! It’s opposite! DACB!”

“Maybe it’s CBAD!”

“No, you’re going backwards!”

Meanwhile, I was just sitting there quietly, with not a single idea as to what the question was asking. Finally, the text changed from Hindi and showed the English version of the question. The question asked, “Starting from the earliest, organize these steps of a student's life in the correct order,” and the options were, “A. Primary School, B. Secondary School, C. Bachelor Course, D. Kindergarten.” However, it was too late by then. The question required you to answer it as quickly as possible, and by the time it was translated to English, the answers were showing up. 

I was disappointed with myself. It wasn’t a big deal to anyone– they didn’t even notice me not saying anything. Yet, I felt left out. They all could understand their cultural language, a language so rich in history and morals. A language that is part of our identity, which makes us Indian. 

They all had regular practice with it since they lived in India and studied the language in school, whereas I almost always spoke in English, and only learned French and Arabic at my school. I started to think, What point is there for me to learn random words in Japanese and Spanish and Norwegian when I can’t even understand words in my cultural language?

Now, It’s not like I forgot the entire language. I still spoke Urdu at home– which is more widely spoken in India than Traditional Hindi, but many often confuse it with being Hindi itself due to the similarity. Think of it as a simplified version of Hindi, if you will. 

Traditional Hindi was something I had learnt in school when I used to stay in India, and it’s something that most Indians also know, regardless if they don't always speak it. Nowadays, I don’t practice it too much and have forgotten a lot of things in it. And that makes me wonder if I’ll soon start to forget the language completely. If I stop practicing it at home too. And with that, I’ll start to forget about our culture, our history, our etiquettes. My passport might still say I’m from that country, but will I still be part of the society? 

Then I decided to stop being to melodramatic. The miracle powers of the human brain is that you can always learn new things, and revise old things. Instead of focusing on random languages, I decided that I could focus on my own. That summer, I went out to some book shops and picked up books of short stories and poems in Hindi, and decided to start watching more Indian television. I wouldn’t just give up on a language if I don’t seem to remember certain words. I intended to keep two worlds separate; to keep English for communicating with the outside world, but maintain Hindi as well as Urdu for my family and country. 

So far, it think its going well.