Every Sunday morning, I, along with dozens of other young Desi children, would attend Bala Vihar, a Sunday school program where we would learn about the core principles and values of Hinduism and learn to write and speak in Kannada. It wasn’t the most sophisticated of institutions, as each class was held in a local high school, but we made do with what we had.
Each class started off with having us repeat all the letters in the Kannada alphabet and write them out five times in our journal.
I never saw it more than just tracing over foreign characters and symbols. I was born watching Sesame Street, reciting vowels and consonants in English, so that’s what I knew. But as the class progressed, the characters that I once saw as gibberish slowly became syllables; then words; then full sentences. I went from not knowing how to speak Kannada to having entire conversations about fruit with my peers. I was so proud of my newfound ability, one that could allow me to speak with my grandparents and cousins in India and allow me to develop deeper connections to my cultural roots.
Once I got into the car to head home, however, the sentences and phrases in Kannada faded into the background as English returned to the tip of my tongue.
While my mom speaks Kannada, my dad grew up speaking Tamil, an entirely different language. Having met in California, my parents never had the need to speak anything other than English. If you heard any conversation in our household, it was always English. Everything in my life from homework to TV shows and even to cereal boxes were in English.
Of course, that didn’t mean that I gave up. I tried to include Kannada in my daily life. I had very productive conversations with my Mom about the weather and how it didn’t rain most days. In the car, I would point out different objects and try to name them in Kannada. I even watched hour-long, low quality kid shows on Youtube just for the exposure. I was getting pretty confident in my Kannada-speaking abilities that I decided to throw in Tamil in the mix to spice things up.
The first week of this language-learning process went off without a hitch. But because there were still so many aspects of my life that didn’t involve me using Kannada or Tamil, this independent learning environment was not sustainable. I eventually grew out of attending Bala Vihar and went back to plain, English conversations with my mom.
I stopped using Kannada, and eventually, I lost it.
At any family reunion, there was always some uncle who tried to start a conversation with me in Kannada, and I would do nothing but give a blank stare and awkwardly explain that I only knew English. Every trip to India had to include some form of teasing and ridicule at the fact that I was the only cousin who couldn’t speak Kannada. I tried to listen intently as my relatives gossiped in Kannada around me, trying to piece together the small words and phrases that I remembered.
Now, I am in my second year at college, and I still can’t speak Kannada or Tamil. While I could just give up on my journey and accept that I will never be able to Kannada and Tamil, I would be losing more than just those languages. I would be losing my Indian heritage. I barely know many of the traditions that my mom used to do when I was little, and my children will probably know less. It is a sad reality that may happen, but by continuously making an attempt, I can at least hold onto that connection and always ensure that my heritage will never die out.