Theloopylululog

What is language but words strung together into a necklace that adorns the days of our life bringing meaning to our existence?

What are words but sounds notated together into music that stokes the fire of our feelings bringing expression to our emotions?

What is sound but the creative voice of the Universe; the bridge between us and the divine bringing us closer to our creator?

Language to me breaks barriers of borders; of the mind and the heart. Although expressed most often through sound, language is best expressed through the eyes; windows to our soul.

Born to a Tamilian man from Chennai and a Tamilian woman from Mumbai; both tracing their ancestory to Palakkad in Kerala, I grew up in a tiny village situated bang on the border between Karnataka and Goa. Is it any wonder that language fascinates me in ways only music does?

The crests and troughs of sound, the varied ways it is expressed through gestures and gesticulations is a joy that never stops to amaze me.

My childhood is a potpourri of Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Konkani, Marathi, Telugu, Hindi and English. Four of which I can speak fluently even today. The others faded as time and age put distance between us. Flashes of some, I still do understand even if I cannot respond to them as I would like to.

I think in Hindi. Write in English. I converse in a language that is my own; a blend of all the places I have lived in and all the roots of culture, tradition, caste, creed and race I carry within me. Smoothly sliding off the see-saw singsong syntax of one into another.

Through graduation and the later half of my life, my love for languages drew me closer to French, a language that has rules of grammer that can put any one to shame and run their fastest mile. But I found myself sticking by it’s side like a loyal wife and bloomed in it’s company joyously.

Time and distance again put paid to that relationship. Decades later, we had our reunion through Duolingo, the language app. Much to my amusement, I could remember every bit I had learnt way back in my teens.

Certain relationships have a way of leaving their marks in our blood. Languages do that to me. A short stay in Nairobi and a love that in all likelihood will last my whole life sowed the seeds of Swahili in me. A language like most languages relying heavily on the influence of the world on it’s guage. A smattering of Arabic and Hindi due to a shared colonial history gives it an added advantage as I could connect with it relationally.

In an ideal world, language brings people together. Opening the gates of culture and history to be shared and understood, passed on to the generations that follow. Thus keeping alive the heritage of the world.

In many ways, my interest in understanding nature through it’s various sounds since childhood – be it in the cooing of a cuckoo that signals the arrival of monsoon, the wild child like laughter of a hyena deceiving it’s prey or the rain soaked croaks of a frog in hiding summoning it’s mate – lit the fire in me to learn as many languages as I could throughout my life.

The idea was never to master any, but to learn just enough to make conversation with people easier thus bridging the gaps between a heavily introverted me and the world out there that seemed like a monster out to get me! And it worked.

I do wish I had learnt Russian…Reading Dostoevsky in his native tongue would have been a joy that would have outlasted me! Alas…I can’t have it all.

Did I mention I travel a lot? In the same breath let me add that I am not social. The more I head into the unknown armed with a few words from many different languages across the world, the less menacing the unknown seems. As someone who loves to keep to herself, I have an innate ability to make connection with anyone I come across the street, thanks to the many arrows of language in my quiver.

Being multi-linguistic magically throws open the hearts of even the most reticent of humans! There is something deeply comforting in sharing a language with a stranger in a new land that reminds them of a home they perhaps had to let go off in search of freedom or financial stability. For a few seconds, they find in me the lost brotherhood they might never live to experience again. It is a blessing that I am eternally grateful for.

Language, science says opens up new neural pathways in our brains thus improving cognition and problem soving. I am known for my memory. I personally think it is because I am well versed in so many languages. I notice myself wear a different personality each time I speak in a particular language. It happens naturally. It is not an act I have taken time to practice!

It is like coming across a new person that resides within me who comes out into the open from time to time, like the little bird that comes out to coo every hour in a grandfather’s clock.

Being multi faceted is a much needed weapon now in a world that is largely going the AI way in everything, slowly discarding human presence. So being multi lingual is a skill that keeps me relevant in a world that is hell bent on replacing me with a bot!

All in all, I am a firm believer in language being spoken through silence. But for a world that believes otherwise and is hence not so well versed in the art of conversing through silence and make itself understood, my love for languages is a thread that keeps me connected to the macrocosm around me and distill it as per the needs of the microcosm within me.