Let’s start with a quick recap of my life. I was born in Vashi, Navi Mumbai, though my roots can be tracked down to a small town on the outskirts of Bangalore, Chikmagalur. My mother tongue is Konkani. When I was two, my family moved to Chennai, where I spent ten of my formative years. We then shifted to Mumbai for around four years for my higher secondary education. After that, I spent another four years in Chennai for my B.tech , and then a year in Mumbai working.  Going by the picture being painted, I should be sufficiently fluent in (lets count them down) – Hindi, Tamil, Konkani and Marathi. Yet the most common question that I’ve been asked is “How come you don’t know Hindi?” or “How come you can’t speak Tamil?”

All of this stemmed from a question my roommate asked me around three years ago. It was so trivial and obvious, that I was amazed I hadn’t thought about it before – “Why didn’t your parents teach you Konkani? “ . The question was pretty straightforward and quite logical. Babies are born with an inept ability to learn and pick up languages around them. It takes around fourteen to eighteen months for a child to start speaking properly, and the choice of language will always be the one spoken at home. Why then, at such a crucial age, did I not pick up a language that was ubiquitous to me.

As I grew older, English became my preferred language of communication. The school I attended in Chennai had kids from all across India, so English was the only language spoken among us. I did learn Hindi as well, for at least eight years, but having no reason to use it, it was simply just a subject for me. Tamil was not imposed on me at all; my Tamilian friends would speak to me in English, and even when I left the house, my parents were there, so I didn’t really need to learn it. Of course, I picked it up; you can’t really stay in one spot for ten years and not learn the language. I do know a bit here and there, and enough to survive, but still not what was expected of me.

Once I was done with eighth grade, my family moved to Mumbai. The move was really hard on me; it was the first time I was completely taken out of my comfort zone and thrown into a new place.  I said good bye to all my childhood friends and wondered how the new life would be. The first day of school was one of my lowest. It came as an utter shock to me, that in Mumbai, everyone spoke Hindi. I sat alone in class on the first day, unable to communicate easily with anyone. Low self-esteem and lack of confidence didn’t help matters. I just want to clarify though, that when I say people spoke Hindi, I mean that they preferred Hindi. Of course, everyone knew English, but that’s just not how it was done.

So the next two years were a little dull and a tad depressing for me. I didn’t really attach myself to anyone in the class, and was more of a loner that anything else. A lot of cries for attention manifested themselves. Once school was done, and I moved back to Chennai, Tamil had found a way to haunt me again. Another four years of struggle followed.

Coming back to the question at hand, why had I not picked up my mother tongue during childhood. I asked my mother about this and she told me that I had a mental block. She didn’t really go into too much detail, but I could deduce that it had some kind of psychological origin.  A little more research led me to believe that I had xenoglossophobia. In layman’s terms, Foreign Language Anxiety. This might not be the case, of course; it’s just something I assume, simply because I have the human tendency to put the blame on something other than myself. Xenoglossophobia is the feeling of unease or nervousness that one experiences when learning or using a foreign language. The definition seemed to resonate with me. I do know the languages, but I didn’t have the nerve to use them, I always felt that I would be judged for making mistakes This anxiety manifested quite a lot of times in my life in the form of several foreign languages.

Once I graduated from college, I went through a pretty huge break-up. This was a blessing in disguise, since it led me towards a path of self-discovery. I don’t know why, or how, but I just decided to stop moping around and make some changes; talking to people being one of them. This turned out to be the best decision of my life; the moment I started going out and interacting, my views of the world changed. My issues with people seemed to resolve themselves, and I learnt how to turn my disadvantage into an edge.

Hindi didn’t really seem to bother me anymore, as long as I didn’t let it. It’s a fun, albeit crazy language, with so many phonetics. I couldn’t differentiate between together (साथ), Sixty (साठ) and seven (सात). I mean, come on, they sound exactly the same to me. I make the smallest of pronunciation and gender mistakes and everyone knows I can’t sound out the ‘h’ in words like Pav Bhaji (पाव भाजी) and Bhaiya (भैया). Back then, I would have kept mum about it, but now, it’s more entertaining, trying to assimilate it.

So here I am, at present day, still struggling to pick up languages, but taking my time with it. It doesn’t really matter, how much of a language I know, I’ve developed enough of a confidence to use it.  I’ve reached a point now where I am comfortable with the pace at which I grasp something. I don’t really want to know it all, because that would take the fun out it. The moments, when I ask my Hindi speaking friends to translate a simple word for me, leading to a questioning of what it means, are priceless, and I’m pretty grateful that no one else can see the language, from my eyes.