CHENNAI: Moomundam. At age two, this was the only word in Tamil my son knew. It was amusing to family members, who would titter quietly before quickly censuring me, “You need to speak to him in Tamil more.”
In case you’re wondering I did NOT teach my son that word. A family friend who used the word often saw that it always got a laugh from my toddler and began to bandy it around as a form of amusement.
Moomundam was one of three words in my son’s Tamil lexicon. (I’m including amma and appa to pad the list). Soon, even that word faded from his memory. All he was left with for the longest time was amma and appa, the two words a tenuous link to his linguistic heritage. One that his own parents were not, and still are not, fit to pass on to him.
When I was pregnant with my son, it was the one piece of advice I got over and over again: “Speak to the baby in Tamil. It’s imperative he or she knows their mother tongue.”
“Of course,” I assured them.
And till my son was almost a year old, I did. Then, somewhere between his first and second birthday I stopped. If I look back and try to pin point if there was some kind trigger for this, nothing comes to mind. Unlike some friends who spoke exclusively in English so that their children would get in to a particular school, I had no real reason (however ridiculous) for doing so.
While I can speak well and read and write passably in Tamil, my Hindi is of the Baghyaraj variety and I studied Sanskrit as a second language in school. But it’s English I am the most comfortable in. I speak, write, think and perhaps even dream in the language. Yes, yes. I’m a Peter. Or is it Mary?
When we had our second child, again the advice came: “At least speak to this one in Tamil.” We were in Bombay by then, where he picked up a smattering of Marathi and Hindi. But notTamil.
The children are almost 8 and 5 now and every week I tell myself and I tell them “From today on I will speak to you only in Tamil at home.” And then after a day, or often even after a couple of hours or minutes, we have relapsed.
I’m not a perfect parent, no one is. But this failure is one I feel more keenly than others. Unlike getting your kids to eat their greens, or try swimming, teaching them a language is the easiest thing to do. You just have to speak in it. That my children may never speak their mother tongue and in doing so miss out on a wonderful world of music, literature and cinema is my fault.
But, I’m a firm believer that you’re never too old to learn something new and it’s never too late to turn a new leaf. So this past Sunday we celebrated International Mother Language Day, by reading a bed time story in Tamil.
It’s a small start, and one I hope to stick to. If a two year old can learn to say Moomundam I’m pretty sure they can learn a little bit more.
@menakaraman
(The writer is a former copywriter whose parenting philosophy is: if there’s no blood, don’t call me)