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Mother's mother tongue


It has been a long time. Lots to write about- Xmas, family visit, birthdays etc. Let me start with how amazingly quick your growth has been. Now I know what a parent is thinking about when they are intently gazing at their child, with a glint of a tear and hint of a benign smile. If you ever caught me doing that, chances are I was wondering about that handful of a being I held in my arms not too long ago and trying to understand where in your grown up version is the little one hidden?
We've been to some of your friends' birthday parties. For one, you are by far the tallest amongst them - that's when they are turning 4 and you are just around three and a half!
 It is an experience by itself to observe you dealing with your little social circle. You go from being self aware to a state of reluctant abandon in a matter of a few minutes. However you retain this shy, happy in your own world attitude that is so typical of me in a gathering. You could be found doing your own thing and being content.
At this age you are perennially obsessed with your Birthday. You are continually looking out for your own Birthday gifts and forever deciding which princess dress, shoes and crown would you be wearing at your birthday party.


You speak pretty clearly now and with an increasingly rich vocabulary. You surprise us every so often with a new phrase or a word that we wouldn't know was within your reach. Amazingly, you understand most of the Hindi spoken around you and respond to it, but in English. The other day you inadvertently replied to something in Hindi - "Toilet Mein hai " (toilet में है )
It's just a three word sentence and that too has an English word but I couldn't stop laughing. I think it was the flow with which you blurted it out that gave us a sneak peek of the desi in you.


Dear daughter

You are conscious and shy about using a language that is at the end of the day going to be foreign to you. I think I have made peace with this as a fact and I can relate to it. That's because Punjabi, despite being my parents' language, was never mine. I have read various accounts of how being multilingual benefits you. For example it expands the basic set of sounds that your brain can process, if you've been introduced to a phonetic language like hindi at a very early age. On the other hand, the fact that even as a child you can switch your languages based on the audiences' capability show a certain level of empathy and understanding of your surroundings.

However the best article I came across was about a Czech lady who was brought up in Canada and with English as the language of life. She wrote about how loosing her father left a void in her life - mostly because she now had no connection to her roots. She had to revisit the now Czech Republic and the Czech to get back that semblance of having an ethnic base.
According to her, research supports this position of hers - language acting like a key to memories in your brain. Personally, my memories of early childhood and later are linked to songs. Any given song opens up flood gates of not just events but the feelings associated with events.
 I do believe Hindi and even Punjabi  would have a very similar influence on your memories of developing years. In months to come you will start formal schooling. that would alter the landscape of your daily engagements for ever. You would be engaged in a lot many more discussions, more predomi­nantly your kind of conversations which you would repeat and play back hundreds of times in your mind. You would still come home to Hindi with your mom & me and a little bit of Punjabi with your daadi. However, this will be like a very light little layer of sugar dust between well baked layers of cake of English words in your head.

Somehow, I hope you are able to retain the flavour and essence of these days through your mother's mother tongue.

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