18 Jan, 2024

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word 

is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning”

Mark Twain

It always begins slowly. A word here, a phrase there, an emotion that’s hard to name, or even a comment that once held personal meaning. That’s how you start to lose your language, your mother tongue.

Arunita began noticing this around her 7th year of living in Canada. It was a rainy Sunday afternoon in Toronto, and she was nursing a cup of hot sweet milky tea when her thoughts turned to her thakuma and similar windy, rainy afternoons spent listening to her stories in their old North Kolkata house. Losing her parents at an early age never truly bothered her since she had her thakuma. Her one constant, her teacher, her mother, her father, and her center of the universe all culminated in this one human being, Bibhabari Devi, her grandmother.

Thakuma was always a force of nature. She was a Bengali language teacher at one of the premier Kolkata schools and was as vivacious as she was intelligent, but that’s not what Arunita was remembering now. She was thinking of how her thakuma’s eyes shone when she first recited ‘Birpurush’ at the age of 10 at the school function. She was thinking of the crisp, starched sarees that her thakuma used to wear, the Titan leather band watch on her right wrist, her long braided hair, and how she always smelled of Jui phool (Jasmine). Arunita thought back to the poem she recited, the one that made her thakuma so proud – ‘Birpurush’. She had always known the whole poem by heart and she settled deeper into her plush sofa on the 30th floor of her downtown condo, as she started reciting it again. The poem came to her clear and fast at the beginning, her voice rising and falling, her intonation perfect when she came to a sudden halt. It’s as if all the air was sucked out of her lungs, the memory of her grandma sitting in the front rows of the audience, listening to her with rapt attention, faded abruptly. Arunita realized with a start that she could not remember the next word. As she sorted through her confusion, she realized, it was not true. It’s not that she didn’t remember the word; she didn’t know the right word. What was it? What was covering the field (kise math chilo dheke)? Confused, she pulled out her phone and looked up the poem, and there it was, Chorkata. Startled, Arunita realized she no longer knew what the word meant anymore. She had a vague idea of what it was, but she had to google to remind herself. This one instance was not enough to concern her; she rarely got to use the language after her thakuma passed away 8 years ago, and she sold off everything back home and came to Canada to start fresh. Arunita read the poem one final time and put her phone away. No time for this now; she had a high-profile job at one of the Top 5 banks and needed to prepare for a big presentation tomorrow.

A part of Arunita held on to that episode, though. When she had the time, she tried to think in her mother tongue. That’s when she realized words that used to be second nature to her now felt beyond reach. As if a veil had been drawn over them and now they remain shrouded in mist and vapor, somewhere in the corner of her mind. While the realization bothered Arunita, she wasn’t too concerned. I mean, when is she ever going to need to use Bengali anymore? It’s a part of her life that she has left behind, something that only serves as distant memories now.

Arunita hates house parties. Her new boss turned out to be a second-generation immigrant, and she insisted on bringing you over to her place for Bijoya. The party was bustling with people from diverse backgrounds, but Arunita found herself struggling to connect with the conversations around her. The sound of laughter and clinking glasses filled the air as she stood by the window, gazing at the city lights below. Her mind wandered back to that rainy Sunday afternoon in Toronto, to the memory of reciting ‘Birpurush,’ and the disconcerting realization that some words had slipped away from her grasp. Arunita tried to push the thoughts aside, reminding herself of the presentation she needed to prepare for the next day. However, a part of her remained unsettled, yearning to reclaim those fragments of her mother tongue that seemed to elude her. As the party continued, she decided to take a break and stepped out onto the balcony.

As Arunita stood on the balcony, Anika’s warm conversation still resonating, a sudden hush fell over the night. An elderly woman slowly approached, her eyes twinkling with a hint of recognition. Anika smiled and introduced her as her great-grandmother, Sarojini Devi, who had recently arrived for a visit from India. Sarojini Devi’s face lit up with nostalgia as she spoke about her youth in Kolkata. Anika shared that her great-grandmother once had a dear Bengali friend, Amrita, whom she had to bid farewell to when she left India. The two friends had promised to stay in touch, but life’s twists and turns had made it challenging. As Anika translated the conversation for Arunita, Sarojini Devi’s eyes gleamed with hope. Eager to reconnect with the essence of her past, she turned to Arunita and began speaking in Bengali, the language she had shared with Amrita. Arunita felt a mix of emotions—honoured to be part of this intergenerational encounter yet uneasy as the Bengali words echoed in her ears. The struggle to carry the conversation became apparent as Sarojini Devi spoke with a fluency that seemed elusive to Arunita. The elderly woman’s words were laden with emotion, recounting tales of friendship, shared laughter, and the cultural nuances that bound them together. Arunita tried her best to respond, grasping at the fragments of her mother tongue that had slipped away. The once-familiar words now felt like distant echoes, lost in the chasm of time and distance. 

In the years that followed, Arunita’s struggle with her mother tongue intensified. The veil over her words thickened, and the mist that shrouded her memories seemed impenetrable. No matter how hard she tried, the words slipped away like sand through her fingers. The attempt to reconnect with her roots only highlighted the stark reality—her language, once second nature, had slipped away irreversibly. As Arunita continued to navigate her high-profile job and busy city life, the remnants of her mother tongue became elusive fragments, lost in the cacophony of a foreign world. The occasional attempts to think in Bengali resulted in frustration and a growing sense of isolation. The once-vibrant connection to her cultural identity faded, leaving behind a void that no amount of effort could fill. In the end, the mist and vapour that had veiled her language solidified into an impenetrable barrier. Arunita, despite her best intentions, found herself severed from the linguistic ties that once bound her to her heritage. The language of her thakuma, the poetry of ‘Birpurush,’ and the scent of Jui phool—all faded into echoes of a distant past. Her mother tongue, once a vibrant part of her existence, became a silent casualty of time and distance, lost in the whirlwind of a life that no longer echoed with the cadence of Bengali words.