I am in a complicated relationship with you

I’ve been thinking about you, and us, ever since that Monday meal with Ben. We were talking about Junior Parents Weekend and the possibility of my dad visiting, when he said: “Hannah, this might be a crazy question, but does your dad speak English?”

I remember the sudden flash of anger, but my voice was calm when I replied: “This is a crazy question, but yes, my dad does speak English, and he speaks it well.” I spoke these words firmly, with pride. I thought I was defending my dad, but I was actually defending you, the language of my colonizers.

You and I, we go way back, don’t we? You and I, we are two entwined threads in a tapestry of conquest, battles, bullets and stomping boots. Rebellions, sickles, swords, slogans, a tapestry of shades of white and shades of brown, and of course, bright red blood. But I don’t usually think of all this, I never care to remember the pain that is too far back in the past, a pain that I did not experience. 

They brought you to us with grand promises. Once our tongues learnt to curl around unfamiliar words, once we learned how to gaze at the lords and ladies and say with reverence — ‘sir,’ ‘madam’ — we would emerge from the darkness into the light of the civilized world. They forced us to bend, so we bend to them, the masters of our fates, and to you, the language that flowed from their tongues.

Then, after centuries of oppression came Nehru, Gandhi, Ambedkar, the fighters, the revolutionaries, the leaders, the peacemakers and with them came freedom. The colonizers left, but you stayed on. In a country with 22 official languages, you would become the closest thing to a unifier.

But we, the freed people of India, never set you free from your label as the civilizer. We bound ourselves and our worth to you, and you became the language of the civilized, the cultured and the educated. You became the language that we aspired to conquer.

My relationship with you began when I was four. I learned to curl my tongue around you, to shield myself from the wrath of the kindergarten teachers. Like most kids from middle-class families, I too studied in a school where English was the primary and only medium of communication. I held on to you tightly, practiced your words over and over again, because I was scared to speak Malayalam in school, scared of the sharp words of contempt and the humiliating punishments that would follow.

But I also fell in love with you when my parents began to read to me “Treasure Island,” “Robinson Crusoe” and “Goosebumps.” “Isle” was the first unfamiliar word that I looked up in the dictionary. “Often” was the relatively strange word that I used in my first essay that I wrote in 4th grade. “Often” is perhaps the word that started me on the journey to become an English major and a writer.

But even as I loved you, I rebelled against the bonds that held us fast. Like most Indians, I too bend you to my will. I listened and learnt to role my r’s, to harden my t’s, to straighten out my a’s, to give an extra curl to my l’s. I took this strange language and injected it with the excited, swinging inflections of Malayalam, my mother-tongue. In doing so, I Indianized you, made you uniquely mine.

But I am also the one who shared you with my brothers. I spoke to them in English, taught them to say: “my name is Hanok Simon.”, “I am fine, thank you”, so that their teachers would not find them wanting, so that they wouldn’t feel alone in a room full of children who babbled in English. I am the one who once laughed at my mom because her English was not as good as mine. I am the one who praised her for learning quickly. I am the one who corrected my dad’s pronunciation of “queen” again and again. I am the one who softened my r’s and my t’s, broadened my a’s, when I moved to the U.S.

And here I am, at Notre Dame, not afraid to share my love for Malayalam songs, yearn for Indian food, religiously watch every new Malayalam movie, even boldly, proudly wear my few Indian clothes. In some ways I am more Indian than I ever was. In some ways, I am decolonized. But in others, I am not.

There is a part of me that believes what I was taught, what my people were taught for centuries, that to speak English is to belong to the civilized, the cultured or the educated. There is still a part of me who believes that knowing English well, grants me a special dignity, power or a sense of worth. There is a part of me that rises up in anger when my friend assumes that my dad doesn’t speak English. There is a part of me whose heart wonders with a spasm of rage if my dad’s dignity is being questioned, if he will somehow be seen as less simply because he roles his r’s and stresses his t’s.

On the walk back to my dorm after that Monday meal with Ben, I stared at the threads that bind me to you. For the first time I really saw you, I really saw us and what we are today. I saw in us the tapestry of blood and violence, of resilience and of power and privilege. And this journey from a forced forgetting, to a remembering of the memories that are not mine, and yet belong to me, this recognition and this acknowledgement of my past — our collective past — offered me a glimpse of freedom from the bonds that hold us fast.