KOCHI: In the mist-laced hills of the Nilgiri region, stories once travelled freely, from grandmother to child, from firelight to memory. Today, many of those words are falling silent. And one woman is running against time to catch them before they disappear forever.
Sindhukaali Chinkeer knows exactly when the alarm bells rang. It was at home. Her mother spoke to her in Bettakuruba, the language of their people. But when the conversation turned to Sindhukaali’s children, the words switched, Malayalam took over. The children replied fluently, comfortably. Bettakuruba stayed behind, unheard. “That is how languages die,” Sindhukaali says quietly. “Not all at once, but inside homes.”
Now 48, Sindhukaali — belonging to Panavally in Wayanad district — has turned that realisation into a mission. For the past six years, she has been walking forest paths and village roads across Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, sitting with elderly members of the Bettakuruba community — the last generation to speak the language in its pure, unbroken form. From their memories, she has collected nearly 4,000 words, slowly shaping what could become the first-ever Bettakuruba dictionary.
The Bettakurubas are an indigenous community of around 5,600 people. Their language — Bettakuruba — is Dravidian, unwritten, and entirely oral. Classified as endangered, it lives only as long as its speakers do. And many of them are old. “If I miss even a few locations, the variations will be lost,” Sindhukaali says.
Dialects change subtly from hill to hill. Each skipped village is a chapter erased. This work, however, comes at a steep personal cost. Sindhukaali is the sole earning member of her family. After spending 22 years as a teacher at a tribal model pre-primary school in Tholpetty, Wayanad — on a salary too small to sustain her household — she now works as a domestic help in Thiruvananthapuram to make ends meet. Her elder daughter is studying dentistry; the younger is in Class XII. Travel for fieldwork means lost wages, borrowed money, and time away from home. “As a mother, this is very hard,” she admits. “But education is the key. My children must go further than I could.”
Language preservation, for Sindhukaali, is not an academic exercise. It is an act of survival. “When a language disappears, rituals disappear. Songs disappear. History disappears,” she says.
Younger generations, pulled by dominant cultures, slowly abandon their own customs. “Their history will remain. Ours will vanish.”
Despite the odds, Sindhukaali continues. Alongside her dictionary work, she writes tribal poetry, delivers public talks, and helps students and researchers understand Bettakuruba songs and traditions. Some of her writings have appeared in Mathrubhumi, a Malayalam literary weekly. Not all her contributions, she notes, have been acknowledged.
Financial strain over the past three years has slowed her work, but not stopped it. What worries her more is time. “Without intervention, our language may disappear in five years,” she says, without drama — just fact.
Writer and sociologist Indu Menon agrees that the danger is real. “A language survives long-term only when it develops a script and a reading culture,” she says. “Dictionaries and grammar preserve structure, but the most important act is to speak it—to sing it, to bring it into everyday life.”
Until that happens, Sindhukaali will continue to listen. Sitting with elders. Writing down words that have never been written down. Holding on to a language, one conversation at a time, before the hills fall silent.
Striving to survive
The Bettakurubas are an indigenous community of around 5,600 people
Their language — Bettakuruba — is Dravidian, unwritten, and entirely oral
Classified as endangered, it lives only as long as its speakers do