For those of us non-Indians living in Kerala, the following story sounds familiar because most of our friends and colleagues of the same age, and younger, as the writer share some similar story about their relationship to their mother tongue:

I’m at one of my favourite restaurants in Chicago, nearing the end of a long week which has been both more and less productive than I’d hoped for.  I dragged myself here in an effort to finish a piece I’ve been working on forever.

The rain has kept most customers away, I’ve had the privilege of a large dining room to myself, and the television set directly above my head has been mercifully silent.  Every now and then, people will come in and leave when they’re done.  I’ve stayed on, nibbling at my chicken biryani and downing endless cups of tea as I lie hunched over in my corner.

At one point, two people come in and I realise instantly that they’re speaking Malayalam.  I try not to look too interested, and avoid any signs that might indicate I can’t just hear them but understand them.  In the Malayalam-speaking world, and in India, where I’m from, my surname gives away my Malayali identity easily, as does, according to some, my hair, my lips, my skin, my everything.  

As they continue talking, I listen.  I know this is rude, but I’m interested not in what they say, but in what hearing a language I haven’t spoken or heard in a very long time, years probably, evokes in me.  In India and amongst Indians everywhere, the question, “Where are you from?” means more than it does amongst Americans.  It means, “Who are your parents?  What do they do?  Where did you go to school?  Might our families know each other?  What do you do?  Who are you, really?” and a host of other unarticulated questions.  In years past, Malayalis, at least Malayali men, held their entire provenance in their names: their family’s place of origin, their fathers’ names, and then their first names.  In effect, their names were like passports, delivering all the information you might ever need: “This is a man, from the city of X, whose father is Y, and who was given the name of Z.  You can trust him or beware of him, depending on what his name tells you.”

When asked by anyone, Where are you from, in India? my response is always, “My parents are from Kerala, but I’m from Calcutta.”  It’s not a response that would have been welcomed when I was actually growing up in India, when where you were from was determined by your parents’ birthplace.  In the Northeast of India, Malayalis or Keralites (there is some sort of distinction, but I’ll leave it to better minds to parse that out) were lumped together with all the rest of the “southies,” including people from southern states like Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu.

I was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata), and then wandered through Kathmandu, Bombay (now Mumbai), and back to Cal.  I’ve spent very little actual time in Kerala, although both my parents’ families as well as my extended family are inextricably woven into its history and politics.  I know of some of that lineage, but a very particular family history has meant it being occluded or veiled in ways that I may or may not grapple with.

My relationship to Malayalam falls within that particular and peculiar history.  In a country like India, where millions are perforce inter-lingual, negotiating several different languages, sometimes simultaneously, the presence of languages is carefully calibrated.  There is one’s “mother tongue,” which is what Malayalam is to me, and there is one’s “first” language, which is what English has always been to me.  Then, if you went to the kind of educational institution I attended, there’s a “second language,” Hindi, in my case (English is the official language of India) and, up to a certain point in your education, a “third” language, the language of the state you reside in; you’re required to learn all of these.

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