Acintya, Week #1: Birds of a Feather
What do you do when you hold a dying bird in your hands?
Do you take it to the vet? Do you try to save it? Do you shake your head and sigh as it dies in your grasp? Do you not care?
This is my dilemma with my mother tongue, Konkani: a vibrant, expressive language spoken by a select few living in the Indian states of Goa, Karnataka, and Kerala. Its dialects vary extremely, to the point where I, someone from southern Kerala, regard Goan Konkani as a completely different language.
It's also rarely used in writing, as it has no script. Because of this, Konkani has no literary canon or tradition. There are little to no representations of Konkani in popular media. There are few textbooks or resources* on learning the language. My only encounters with the language of my ancestors are through talking with family members; yet, many of them try to speak to me in broken English despite my constant reminders that yes, I can speak Konkani.
Even they are slowly losing this language; when speaking Konkani, I often have to use words in English or Malayalam when a Konkani translation doesn't exist. Worse, a translation does exist, and it's been lost over generations of surviving colonialism.
For instance, after a lifetime of speaking Konkani, I only learned the word for "soap" a few months ago. Why? Because my grandmother always used the English word instead. It's only when she told me about how my great-grandfather used the Konkani word for soap (sowkapalli) that I learned how to say it.
Despite the numerous Konkani communities across southern India and the efforts by many to preserve Konkani culture, the language is dying fast. Most fluent speakers are older, and as the youth spread around the world, paying no heed to societal urges to marry within the community and adopting the languages of their area of residence, the number of fluent speakers continually decreases.
In the middle of all of this is me, someone who is grasping at straws to preserve an endangered language. I wince internally every time English or Malayalam rolls off of my tongue where Konkani should be, and I mourn the rich linguistic tradition of idioms that my language was once famous for. As my parents continue to converse with me in English and confess that they've started thinking in English instead of Konkani, I wonder just how detrimental our cultural alienation has been to how we perceive our linguistic identity.
I've watched the dying bird in my hands for years. I try something different every time: bandaging its scars, ignoring it, pouring water over it in the hopes that it might grow. But every time, nothing happens, and I'm stuck wondering how to salvage the festering wounds that have grown over time.
This is my identity, my language: one that wanes as beautifully as it waxed, one that carries the weight of a thousand nests and now weighs as light as a feather.
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My great-grandmother, Vasantha Kilikar, and I, July 2019. Prior to this photo being taken, she expressed to me in English that while she could understand the language, she could not speak it well and thus could not talk to me much. She passed away 6 months later. |
Hi Acintya, I love how you tied your whole post to the analogy of a dying bird; it really put the whole thing into perspective for me. I can relate to having relatives try to speak to me in broken English despite me being able to speak my mother tongue and even witnessing my parents start to slowly lose touch with their own mother tongue. After reading this post, I am definitely going to start looking out for breaths of Konkani wherever I can, or at least be more aware of the existence of such languages.
ReplyDeleteAcintya, reading the first few lines of your blog immediately told me you had a goal about how you were to express this part of your identity and evidently, you expressed it so beautifully. These striking questions, imposed on me, the reader, in such clarity and quickness, captured my attention like a moth to the light. To me—who knows nothing of the grievances of knowing my native language is dying right before my eyes—you portrayed such a tragic scene so well that I can’t help but be haunted by your words. I personally carry an immense awareness of being able to lose things forever and while I could never compare my own experiences to such an important and proud part of your identity, your story really resonated with me. The imagery you use at the end is also just so artfully written, I don’t know how you do it. It feels like an honor to be able to read something as raw as this. To be honest, I already knew your writing was gonna hit with a title like that and that bittersweet intimate photo. Thanks for crafting this amazing reading experience within just a couple hundred words.
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