During one of my first trips to Dhaka, the officer at Foreigners Registration Counter at the airport asked me if I knew Bangla.
“Olpo olpo,” I confessed. “Ami beshi Bangla bujhina,” I clarified, so that he would not test my ability. He seemed quite pleased with my effort and decided to continue the conversation.
There is a famous Bangla song with my name in it, he informed me. Have I heard it?
I hadn’t. He hummed a bar. “Ogo Nirupama ... korio khoma …”
Was it by Manna Dey? He asked a colleague. “No, Kishore Kumar, I think,” his colleague replied. The names were familiar, even if the song wasn’t. I liked Kishore Kumar songs, I said. I would listen to it.
If you know Bangla, you can understand it, my new friend suggested. I would try, I offered. I later searched for the song on the Internet and found it, but still couldn’t get a translation. What I remember is the fact that for a few minutes, we were drawn closer together by a word.
A word that magically appeared in a different language. As I writer, I know the power and pull of words, but I am only beginning to understand how precious a language can be.
I had never paid any attention to International Mother Language Day. If I did see it in passing as a notification in the newspaper, I did not give much thought to its origins.
I am in a nation that holds the language in its name, that was created in the name of language. Lives have been lost, blood has been spilt for the right to speak a language. It must mean something, something big.
I know four languages. I am extremely comfortable in English, I am fairly fluent in Hindi, I can speak reasonably good Tamil, my mother tongue, and I know some French, now grown rusty with neglect. I am neither proud nor ashamed of the languages I speak.
For the last few years, my husband and I have been trying to get our daughter to speak in our mother tongue Tamil. She understands the language and has a vocabulary of a 100 words but cannot carry on a fluent conversation in Tamil.
She has studied Hindi in school, and now learns Spanish. I myself studied in Delhi and cannot read or write Tamil, being much more conversant with Hindi. I confess that my efforts to get her to speak it more are sporadic and without energy. She doesn’t really need to know Tamil, we decided. She may never live in a village in Tamil Nadu anyway.
After independence, India was divided into states on the basis of language. We have had our language agitation when the southern states protested against the imposition of Hindi as the official language, the Tamilians being the most staunch protestors! English still continued as the language of the administration.
Today, when two educated Indians meet, we first converse in English, then we may sprinkle Hindi words in our conversation.
The use or non-use of a language creates its own stamp. Unlike people in other countries, who use English as the language of the workplace and switch to their native tongue at home, the urban Indian sees English as a marker of social status. Even as differences in caste are slowly fading, thanks to intermarriage, education, and mobility, class distinctions become more apparent.
There is a distinct urban and rural divide. The quality of English further stamps you as a first generation vernacular medium or a polished English medium type who seems to have emerged from the grand portals of a stately English Castle.
If India has been divided by language, Bangladesh has been united it. What is obvious is the pride in the language. I see it in the Bangla numbers on the license plates of cars, on billboards which do not have the need for translation or explanation. When two Bangladeshis meet, they speak in Bangla. Children speak to each other in the language, confident and accepted. To speak Bangla is as natural as breathing.
Language is about many things: Roots, identity, culture, power. But most of all, it is about love. Ekushey is a day of mourning for the martyrs who died defending the right to speak Bangla. It is also a day to remember the deep love that lives in the heart of the language.
