Diminishing Voices !

I chose to describe myself as someone suffering from “Language-o-phobia”. It’s a term that I coined and hence is very different from “Xenoglossophobia” that some of you might have come across. While “Xenoglossophobia” is generally used to describe someone who fears foreign languages, the dictionary hasn’t yet recognized an individual who fears ANY language; that is the segment I fall into. I would like to believe that I am not particularly alone in this segment.

Well, this stems from the fact that circumstances have shaped me up in a way that I cannot be confident of/in any of the languages that I had the opportunity to be in contact with. A very dear friend of mine once described me as one whose “Tamil has an English accent; English has a Tamil accent and whose Hindi is accent less”. Yeah, I was born to Tamil parents who ensured that I wouldn’t learn the a,b,c,d of Tamil. However ruthless it may sound, they feared that the proximity with ‘Tamil’ is inversely proportional to‘English proficiency’.

While I was struggling with the language of mortals, there sprouted another species in the name of programming language which I do not even wish to describe. I have not counted, but my guess is that there would be at-least 200 of those breed either existing or defunct today. Gosh!

Now coming back, for a very, very long time, 25 years to be precise, I had taken it for granted that learning Tamil was never really that important. I’d believed that Language is only a tool of communication. It must have started off with gestures before moving on to vocals, I have heard my mind voice assert. Hence I was completely convinced that one common language in the world, probably English would end up solving the fundamental problem of communication, if that is what it was meant to address.

Wonderstruck that 6900 languages exist, I would convince myself that gradually with time this would condense. Before the era of continental invasions, prior to 17th century, humans must have lived in complete isolation and hence developed their own form of linguistic sounds. With the rise of the British Empire primarily & the American imperialism to some extent, the seeds for a single global language was sown, according to me. I sat believing; seeing my brethren only strengthened my supposition. I hoped secretly that eventually, when English takes over, children would grow up to be confident individuals proficient in at-least one language, unlike me, confused & all jumbled up.

To talk about how multiple languages can end up making the child muddled is a different story all together. For now, let us take it as a given J , though the sample set under consideration is only one !

To sum up my story till now, I am a mixed-up individual when it comes to languages & had concluded that the eventuality will lead to a single language dominion in the long run.



Ponniyin Selvan - A still !

Then an event occurred in my life; an event that would lead me to believe that it is important to treasure other languages too perhaps, important enough to learn& spread them. I was reading the English translation of the famous Tamil historical novel by Kalki, “Ponniyin Selvan” (Son of Ponni – Ponni being a river). Written in five volumes it is a fictitious narration of the story of Arulmozhivarman (the famous RajaRaja Chola I). With every passing page (thanks to the beautiful translation, in simple English, with usage of Tamil words, the translator ensured that the authenticity & feel of the composition was retained to an extent that the reader could get effortlessly transported back in time to the golden era of the Chola dynasty & the simple living of the Tamils then, and more importantly Vandiyathevan.) The book made me yearn to learn the language that I had shunned so far, my mother tongue. I suddenly felt handicapped by not being to enjoy other such treasures that would eventually connect me to my roots.

I realized that a language is an essential part of who one is; his traditions& culture; more importantly a language connects one to his history. It is through a language that we develop our thoughts, shape our experience, explore our customs, structure our community, construct our laws, articulate our values and give expression to our hopes and ideas. How would I be able to find reason to my living, reason to my actions & inactions if I were to become party to destroying the usage of my tongue? End of the day, I relish jeera milaga rasam more than mulligatawny soup anyway! Languages have been developing in isolation over the past & a lot or literary work has already been developed in them. They have intertwined so deeply with our history & culture and have become an integral part of ourselves that it is probably too late to forget all of them at one go. A Thirukkural cannot be retold in English nor can The Gita be & both these books are instrumental & essential in developing the thought process or orientation of an individual as much as a Thoreau or a Shakespeare.

Diversity would lead man to question and rationalize his arguments. It would lead to his emancipation in the long run. Languages will probably change and evolve with time, the gap between various languages would probably narrow down in future but we are probably very far away from the time where there shall be just one functional language in the world unless technology decides that in favor of its programming language.

More importantly, there would be people like me, more of them in near future who would probably learn the importance of their language at a very later part of their life & ensure that their kids are drowned in it for a lifetime thus preventing the languages from dying!

Is it meaningful to blow out the candles on a birthday cake??

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration when I say that I long to get older by a year just because I love the birthday celebrations with the cakes (which have steadily graduated from a girly micky mouse shaped pista one to dark chocolate based fantasies). More importantly I love blowing out the candles, especially the determined ones that refuse to get blown out. I still remember the struggle I had to go through in my first association with these contagious re-lighting candles, a couple of years ago in the bubbly corridors of my post-graduate hostel.

Now that makes me wonder as to why and how this tradition got passed on! I will tell you where my skepticism stems from. According to the Hindu tradition, light is a metaphor for knowledge, then doesn’t blowing out the candles suggest a shift towards darkness & hence ignorance?

 So I tried to dig deeper into the actual take off of the practice ! 

Most of the articles that I bumped into revolved around it having originated from an early tradition that believed that smoke from candle would take one’s wish or petition up to god! Now that made me laugh – While here we are criticizing our hindu traditions as we consider them to be hollow, in front of us lies our most lovable tradition borrowed from the western lands which at the onset appears to be exceedingly shallow.

There were a couple of other explanations which revolved around Germans being skilful manufacturers of candles having inducted them into the picture. Now that was definitely a brilliantly crafted marketing gimmick that Germans did which has survived centuries just the way our Akshaya Trithiya / Valentine’s Day has.

The most renowned of all explanations is about how the Greek made a certain form of cake as an offering for their moon goddess and planted a candle in the centre of it to make it glow like a moon. Well, that demotes the entire tradition into a decorative piece.

There was no other meaningful explanation that I could lend my ears to when a verse from the bible caught my attention. It was not essentially about candles but on incense which can be considered as a sister of candles. “Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.” Mining deeper helped me understand this better. The incense (candle) lay dead, without fragrance, with no capacity whatsoever of soaring till it was kindled. Similarly unless there is a flame or passion in one’s heart, the prayer shall not reach God and the benefits can’t be seen on mortal earth. Once the incense or candle is lit, the fragrance and smoke from it soars ahead spreading its boundaries.  Similarly if one doesn’t light the fire in the heart and kindle the passion, the prayers and aspirations will not go any far. Thus to achieve anything at all which could well connote to prayers reaching the ears of God, one needs to kindle the passion or light the flame in his heart.

Now that is convincing and satisfactory to an extent. Oops! Well, it seems like we have gotten our hearts in the wrong places. It is not about blowing out the birthday candles but actually about lighting them! What a gross misinterpretation & mis-orientation!