Found In Translation

Ever been to a place where nobody speaks your language? Where all you do is sign and mime all day to get the simplest messages across? If you haven't, you would be surprised to know how many spend their lives away from their homeland in places whose words they neither speak nor understand.

I grew up in Delhi, so I can speak Hindi very well. I am Bengali, so I have no problems getting around in West Bengal and other Bengali speaking areas. Plus, I'm perfectly fluent in English and that's useful everywhere these days. So far I haven't had too many problems with language, but I see people who do.

Take for example these twig boys in my class. In my college, people (including some teachers) speak in Bengali most of the time. One of these boys is front Bhutan and his mothertongue is Zonka. The other is from Darjeeling and speaks Nepali back home. Sometimes, they don't understand when the rest of us are saying. Then there are my neighbours in Mumbai who just migrated from Pakistan and only speak Sindhi. And there's my mother who says she gets nervous in Mumbai sometimes when everybody around her speaks Marathi. Even I've seen that she acts notably more confident in Kolkata, because she is very fluent in Bengali.

I belong to a country which was divided into linguistic states. People speaking Hindi shoved into one part of the country. A separate land for those who speak Tamil. Another one for the Oriyas. And a number of more states separated on the basis of language. I see that language can really become a social issue sometimes, because my mother witnessed the anti-Bengali movement in Assam. And I know it can be hopelessly irritating if someone just doesn't understand what you're saying. But at the same time, if you really look on the bright side, you'll see that language doesn't always become a communication barrier.

Now consider this- my aged Sindhi neighbour conversed easily with my grandmother who only speaks Bengali. They don't share the same language but they but there are lots of other things they share and so they can connect without speaking the same words. My mom actually likes Mumbai very much and wouldn't want to move away just because she doesn't speak Marathi. And the two boys in my class got by just fine last semester, and now they even speak some words in Bengali sometimes.

If we want to understand each other, we will. It doesn't matter what we speak as long as we really want to express ourselves. So here's some advice- Don't lose patience with those who don't speak your language and don't close yourself off to learning new tongues. Language is an imaginary wall, which means it doesn't exist at all, and so we can all help bring it down.