India is woven from many threads of customs, culture, languages and dialects—a noisy tapestry of unity in diversity. Growing up between Malayalam at home and Hindi in school, I kept tripping over one of those threads. Hindi was everywhere around me, yet it refused to sit easily on my tongue – it was not easily my language identity.
The sounds of अ, आ, इ, ई, ए… क, ख… the Hindi alphabets still echo in my mind. I can see five-year-old me, head bent over a copywriting book, tracing Devanagari letters in class. Little did I know Hindi would become a language I had close ties with, unlike Malayalam, my mother tongue—and it was definitely not a love story.
I was brought up in the Gulf with a close-knit group of non-Malayalee friends from kindergarten to class 10. We grew up on a steady diet of the latest Hindi and Malayalam movies, every weekend. The video cassette rental shop was our go-to spot every Thursday night, so you’d think I’d pick up Hindi easily. But I didn’t. I never felt confident enough to use it.
Speaking Hindi felt like trying to cross a huge chasm, a gap of inhibition I never felt with Malayalam. My mother, who picked up languages with ease, was baffled. “Kochu, all your friends are Hindi speakers and still you can’t speak Hindi? You know the language and you understand it well, no?” She pointed it out once and never mentioned it again.
When I was eight, my class teacher chose me to recite the Indian National Pledge, “भारत मेरा देश है,” at assembly. I was thrilled. I told my mother over lunch and she patted my back: “Practise well. You can do it.” I practised hard for the next few days.
That Monday morning, I stood before a sea of students, stretched out my right arm and recited the pledge—confident, clear. As I bounced down the steps, my teacher pulled me aside, eyes blazing. “What were you reciting?”
“भारत मेरा देश है, Ma’am,” I replied meekly.
“Oh! You messed up the words and the pronunciations!”
“Sorry, Ma’am.” My heart sank, my shoulders stooped, and I dragged my feet back to class, convinced everyone was giggling at me. My eyes stayed fixed on the floor.
My parents picked up languages effortlessly; I consoled myself that I’d inherited the recessive gene. I never had to speak in Hindi class—my teachers understood, my friends understood—and I hid behind that.
Then, at twelve, during a function, there was an Antakshari competition: Girls vs Boys. All of us in that age group had to join. I climbed on stage with the girls, my heart thumping loudly. “Hey, girl! You know no song. No words, no lyrics! You shouldn’t be here!” my mind warned.
I whispered to the group leader, “Psst! I don’t know any song.”
“Any song?” Her big eyes widened.
“Mmm… no…” I squeaked.
“Maybe you can lip sync with us,” she offered.
“Mmmm… no, if you ask me, I won’t be able to… I want to quit.”
By now, everyone had heard. Too many eyes were on me. “Please excuse me this time,” I managed. I padded down the wooden stairs, looking only at my feet, and slipped into a seat in the audience. Shame engulfed twelve-year-old me.
On the drive home, I stayed quiet. My parents and sibling hardly referred to the incident, and because they didn’t, I didn’t wallow in that shame. A dear childhood friend later nudged me to listen to Hindi movie songs on her audio cassettes and sing along. I started late, but better late than never.
Ask me today if I join Antakshari and the answer is yes. Do I lip sync? No. I still mess up the lyrics, but I don’t care. I’ve begun to enjoy the fun of singing anyway.
Listening to those tapes helped me imagine myself speaking Hindi fluently, like the actors on screen. As a young adolescent, I dreamed I was speaking स्पष्ट, शुद्ध Hindi. Speaking a language is one thing; writing it is a different ball game.
In class, I practised questions and answers, willing myself to memorise words and grammar. A Hindi–English dictionary became my best friend. For a while, rote learning worked, until grade 9, when I had to write longer essays and letters and suddenly ran out of words.
That was when I received a particularly heavy Hindi–English / English–Hindi dictionary to help me find the right words. I invested time and energy in that book and can vouch for how useful it was. Today’s generation has Google and AI tools; we had heavy dictionaries.
I still needed help, and I found it in a tuition class where our Hindi sir helped me and a few friends express ourselves with the little vocabulary we had. With time, I gained enough confidence to write an essay or a letter. The preparation I put in, along with my teachers’ support, paid off in the exam hall in March. That was the last time I would put Hindi words to paper. In that moment, I silently bid a happy farewell to Hindi.
Those last few years of self-study, and the effort I put into Hindi prose and poetry, would later stand me in good stead in a different land, at a different time. Nearly a decade on, in another Indian state, I found myself leaning on Hindi to converse with people around me.
I was shocked to hear myself hailing a rickshaw, giving directions and even haggling with shopkeepers over vegetables in “manageable” Hindi. For someone who doesn’t pick up new languages with ease, it was surprising how I could make do. I realised that as long as I wasn’t conscious of the language or how I sounded, I could speak it. Some things get better with time—like driving or cycling—you never fully forget them.
Much later, as an educator, I found myself chatting away with colleagues in Hindi. One day, a colleague asked, “Aap kahan se hain India mein?”
“Keral se hoon,” I replied.
Her eyes widened. “Seriously? I thought you were from a Hindi-speaking state.”
I laughed. “I get that often.”
Language isn’t always a barrier. Sometimes, it’s a thread that bridges differences and stitches us closer. Hindi, once the language of my deepest inhibition, has become a thread quietly woven into my identity.
