Mother tongue and the story of my childhood trauma
This was one of the winning essays in Opportunity for Emerging Writers Competition held by the Australian South Asian Centre.
I wake up almost half an hour early every morning to put on a face mask made from kitchen ingredients. My mom claims that it lightens the skin and will make me ‘fair’. We have a trip scheduled by next week to my maternal grandmother’s home. They have a huge family, two of my uncles, their kids, wives and my grandparents. It’s a big house with ample parking space, a private terrace and a small balcony. I love this part of my winter vacation. Unlike our small little apartment there is room for everyone and more importantly I get to travel and meet my cousin sister. The only catch was that I have to look fair or brighter to get rid of the endless criticism from my mom’s entire family and to avoid embarrassing my parents.
I am eleven years old and my biggest concern whenever the vacations start is how I would get myself to look as fair as my cousins. I do all I can, masking myself with Besan(gram flour) and Haldi twice a day, using popular fairness creams and avoid going out in the sun. We reached my grandmother’s house four days later. As soon as we enter, my uncle, aunt and my grandmother say, ‘You have become so dark and dull.’ And I immediately know how the rest of our stay is going to be.
It’s been over 15 years since then and most of my memories of visiting my grandparents and uncles have vanished. And the ones that I recall are filled with endless criticisms about my looks, my choices, the way I talk or don’t talk.
My mother calls me, ‘Chimu’. It’s the Marathi word for sparrow which is regarded as an expression of affection. My grandmother, however, refused my claim to this affection, instead she gave it to her most favorite grand-daughter. The only name/nicknames I was graced with in my immediate family circle was “Kaali” which literally translates as black. This was also the first word I was greeted with as soon as I was born. My grandma would humorously narrate her first encounter with me when she entered the hospital room after my birth and how she loudly snared at me with disgust because I had inherited “my father’s features and complexion.”
As a result of such bullying, I grew aloof and quiet. I would rarely speak anything when I’d visit them, I’d go hours without speaking to anyone. My silence was always used as an evidence to tell my mother, how “dull and dumb” I was by her brothers and her mother. As I didn’t fit into my uncle’s and my grandmother’s definition of a lady, my choices and my opinions started becoming another stepping stone for my bullying. I was bombarded with remarks such as “you are over smart” or “you should get a mother-in-law, who will beat you up and teach a lesson”.
On other hand, I was doing incredibly well at school. I was able to forge strong connections with my teachers and friends. There I wasn’t a misfit but unique, I wasn’t just my appearance but way more than that.
It was no surprise then that my intimate thoughts from a very young age were always spoken in my mind in English. This was the language I inherited in school, outside the confines of my home where my appearance, opinions and choices weren’t a cause of concern for anyone. Where I was celebrated for who I am and for who I was becoming. As I was barely speaking at home, I barely communicated in Marathi and as my connection with my teachers and peers at school was getting stronger so was my comfort with English.
Words shape our identity. They help us to define ourselves and our place in the world. The way we use words define how we perceive the language we use. According to writer Kahar Zalmay, “Language is not simply an assortment of words but an entity that connects an individual to his family, identity, culture, music, beliefs and wisdom. It is the carrier of history, traditions, customs and folklore from one generation to another.”
The words from my mother tongue, Marathi that were omnipresent around me were the words used to call me out for my skin complexion, dismiss me for my opinions or even bully me for my silence. The constant taunts had been imprinted in my mind. While my family was becoming an unsafe space the language that I inherited from them suffered the same fate as well. Even the literature or movies that I watched in my mother tongue were always about belittling the women who were already going through domestic abuse. A movie, called, “Maherchi Saadi” (means “a sari from your mother’s house”), very blatantly glorified a woman who “endures” the domestic violence and at the end is called, “an ideal woman”.
Whereas English opened a whole new world for me where I was welcomed and where I got enough space to even process the trauma that was carried to me by my mother tongue. In college, I learned vocabulary such as feminism and equity and built relationships that were based on empathy, all of which felt like I had finally found my place in this world.
It’s been several years since then and I am well into my mid-twenties. I am still writing in English and barely speaking or writing in my own mother tongue. Maybe, a part of me is still scared that the same dismissals or bullying will be echoed to me if I dare speak my mind in the language that was always used to silence me. Maybe, I always found refuge in everything that was not home — people, places and even the language.
According to education specialist, Hurisa Guvercin, “When a person speaks his mother tongue, a direct connection is established between heart, brain and tongue. Our personality, character, modesty, shyness, defects, skills, and all other hidden characteristics become truly revealed through the mother tongue because the sound of the mother tongue in the ear and its meaning in the heart give us trust and confidence” My mother tongue did exactly the opposite, I never felt confident nor did I feel like I could trust anyone.
For a long time, I did believe that it’s my fault for not speaking my Marathi fluently. I accused myself for being elitist and choosing to speak in a way that made my survival easy in this capitalist world. In spite of coming from a family of Marathi literature fanatics, my inclination towards my own mother tongue has been quite withering.
It is only now, years later, with several sessions of therapy that I came to realize; my broken relationship with my mother tongue is an evidence of the childhood trauma and how it impacted my view of the world around me.
The language we speak and the way we use it, helps in building relationships, not only with others but also with ourselves. While one traumatized me the other helped me to start healing that trauma. My polarizing relationships with Marathi and English are not shaped by the capitalist world that lies outside but the patriarchal world that lies inside the four walls of my house.
People say, mother tongue is the language we speak at home, but what if the place we call home doesn’t feel like one? What if it feels more like a prison? What do we call this language then? The one that only signifies pain, hurt and trauma. What language, then, truly deserves the title of mother tongue?
