Abandoning Odia, the Nostalgia, the Guilt

“I speak three languages, write inTwo, dream in one.
Don't write in English, they said, English is
Not your mother-tongue. Why not leave
Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,
Every one of you? Why not let me speak in
Any language I like? The language I speak,
Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses
All mine, mine alone.” 

-Kamala Das, An Introduction

I have been asked, “Odia is dying, isn’t it?” I don’t answer the question. Because, I cannot answer the question.

I was born in Odisha, Berhampur to be precise. I spent eighteen years of my life in Sambalpur. I studied in an English medium school where Odia was my third language for 5 years. I know how to speak, read, and write Odia. I can understand Odia. Yet, I do not know anything about Odia.

Oh, by the way, my mother/father tongue is Odia.

At 18, when I moved to Delhi for my graduation, for the first time in my life, I missed Odia. I was shocked to know that people do not know the difference between Odia and Odissi. Oh! I cannot even count the number of times I have been asked, if I speak Odissi at home. With a gentle smile, wondering if I was the only one to go through the torturous Geography, and Civics books in school, I replied every single time that Odissi is the classical dance of Odisha, Odia is the language, and no, I do not speak Odia at home.

Why not? I don’t know, maybe because, I grew up in a colony and school where even though the majority of the population was Odia, it had diversity. My friends ranged from Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab, Gujrat, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, and Kerala. The language that I started speaking the most once I entered school, was Hindi. The language towards development, I was told, is English. So yes, even though I spoke to some of my Odia friends in my mother tongue, I got used to speaking in Hindi.

To be honest, I cannot recall the time when my family of four last communicated in Odia. What I do remember is my mother scolding us for talking in Hindi at home. I can still recall the day when my brother returned from school singing, “Goli maaro Odia ko” (Shoot Odia) because Sanskrit was introduced as an option to Odia in Class 5, his was the first batch. Being the dog’s tail that I was, if I consider my brother the dog here, I followed him everywhere and in everything. I ceased to talk in Odia.  My father followed after a few scoldings, and my mother was the only one trying to save her tongue in the family of betrayers. A year out of Odisha, constantly having to communicate in Hindi with the doctors, nurses, and the hospital staff, she gave in to Hindi as well.

Occasionally, I speak Odia with five people; my two sets of grandparents and my school best friend. I speak Odia like a non-Odia. When a classmate who shared a distance of a metre between our respective room windows found out in class 10, that I am an Odia, she was shocked. The Odia feel I have no accent while speaking English or Hindi. The non-Odias feel that any mistake that I do while speaking the latter languages is because they tend to believe that I have spoken Odia for the most part of my life, and the sudden transition must be quite difficult. If only they knew!

But believe me when I say, my entire childhood was spent listening to the stories from my grandmother. Every time I meet her, I need a story. Her stories range from the Panchatantra tales to the myths and legends of Odisha to the tales of our family, three generation before my existence. I have been fascinated all my life with those stories, she is an amazing storyteller. And those stories, I still remember in Odia.

Today, I am haunted by the nostalgia of my mother tongue. Many a times, I wonder, why did no one tell me that English isn’t the only language to concentrate on? Why did I abandon Odia and nobody said anything? When I started reading books, my father suggested that I read the Odia books we have in our home library. I settled for Sparks, Rowling, Ahern etc. And quite ironically, this sense of guilt of abandoning Odia happened only when I studied the coloniser’s language and literature. 

In my language classes, I was told that no matter how many languages we learn, in the end our deepest emotions are conveyed in our mother tongue. I could never understand this statement. Odia is the first language that I acquired. I spoke Hindi during my schooling. I began communicating in English only in my undergrad days. And yet, I have never thought in Odia in my saddest or the happiest times. I remember Odia only as the torturous subject followed by Hindi, where I could never get the matras right, could never remember the saralartha (short notes), and cried at 2 in the morning before the exam, desperately asking my mother to help me remember or rather mug up an essay. Fed up, my mother changed my third language as Sanskrit in Class 6.

English has now become my comfort zone, I have internalised it. I think in English, I can’t even imagine using the Hindi words anymore. But then, I do not regret, because if not for that, I would have never gained any interest in Odia, for the rest of my life. For more than a year, I have had a strong sense of nostalgia and guilt towards my mother tongue. I do not blame myself for abandoning it, because not everyone questioned the internalised colonial mindset we have. Even though, English is the language in which I think and write, I am now curious about finding out the literature of my culture. That’s a win, I think.