Lost In Translation

My 5-year old nephew does not speak Maithili.

Both his parents do.

It’s not his fault. He is being raised in Pune, a city as far from Bihar geographically as it is culturally. The environment is simply not conducive for a conversation in the language.

He does, however, speak to his grandparents on calls, and visits them often, and so, understands a fair amount of Maithili. But he doesn’t speak it.

I am sure as he grows up, he will understand most of it, maybe even all of it. But I am not too sure he will ever speak it.

In college, I had friends, children of first generation emigrants, the non-resident Biharis, who too could understand Maithili well, but couldn’t speak the tongue, however hard they tried (and try they did).

I am trilingual- I speak Hindi, English and Maithili. Before I could speak a proper sentence in Hindi, I was churning out paragraphs in Maithili. My family had a very hard time getting me to switch to Hindi. They would plead, “Shipra, say Papa Patna gaye. In Hindi.” (Shipra, speak in Hindi that Papa went to Patna). And I would very confidently repeat, “Pappa Hindi mein Patna gelkhin” (Maithili translation).

Long story short, I now speak all the 3 languages. But guess what? While I am proficient in reading and writing in the other two languages, the tongue that I learnt first, my mother tongue, I only speak. Not write.

Forget writing in Maithili, I haven’t ever even read a Maithili book or a story. The only literature I have ever read in Maithili was the weekly column in the Hindi newspaper.

And to be fair, I haven’t read that many books even in Hindi, and with each passing day, Hindi is only getting more distant.

I have nothing against English. I love English as a language. In fact, I write primarily in English.

But all said and done, it’s difficult to find our everyday lives in most of the English literature. A friend who writes in English was telling me the other day how, however hard one might try, Diwali will never have the same appeal in English literature as Christmas. Sure, we have R K Narayans and Vikram Seths, but it’s only a small group. So, very often what we end up doing is reading these stories, based far far away from our lives, and then try aligning our lives to match the narrative, lest we face any dissonance.

And it’s all too systemic. With the open economy, and English being the primary language of most of higher education and employability, I don’t see why an average Indian would want to learn a local language that doesn’t do them any good.

But I also strongly believe that Indian languages deserve a much richer place in our lives. So much has been written and worked on in Hindi and Maithili and other Indian languages, which echo so much of our history and culture.

And to think that our children, and their children will never get to experience any of it. To think our children will never share our language, our culture, is appalling. To think all of that will forever be lost in oblivion.

A few cultures, like say Bengalis, have done an excellent job at preserving their heritage, but the same can definitely not be said about Maithils. Sure, we have a few FB groups, some singers, a couple of movies, but I am not sure that’s enough. I am not sure what is.

And I don’t have a solution right now. But I think talking more about it would be Step 1. Making noise. And maybe teaching the language in schools could help. (True story: Never read Maithili as part of curriculum. Never.) Maybe occasionally, you could even sneak in a Maithili book on your reading list.

Me? I am going to put one Maithili word on Instagram everyday. That’s what I am going to start with. Until I know better.

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