CHENNAI: My recent visit to Bhimbetka Caves in Madhya Pradesh was a learning experience — of human existence back then, their ways of living and communicating through the rock paintings. These very rock shelters inspired author Vaishali Shroff to explore a book on rare Indian languages.
“I marvelled at how we humans have the power to create languages and even destroy them and realised that languages are living beings. Upon further reading, I discovered the alarming rate at which languages in India, and across the world, are dying, and decided that it’s high time someone write about these languages — maybe it could help save some languages before it’s too late,” she says.
This led to the birth of Taatung Tatung And Other Amazing Stories of India’s Diverse Languages, which was released on International Mother Language Day (February 21). The book discusses everything from state languages and the partition of regions due to languages, to efforts individuals are taking to preserve the dying ones.
“I want Taatung Tatung to be a starting point for exploring our languages further. Through books like these, I want to give agency to more such neglected cultural aspects of our country in the hope that they will get the attention they deserve. I’ve tried my best to write these books in a very light, interesting, and conversational style so that more people will read them without thinking twice that it’s a heavy-duty, non-fiction read that’s hard to digest,” she explains.
Excerpts from the interview follow.
How long did it take you to finalise this book?
I worked on this book for nearly two years. While some stories were entirely based on reading and research, many of the stories wouldn’t have been possible without the amazing language warriors and Adivasis who I had the good fortune of knowing during this project. They helped me with all the information I would need to write a strong narrative and helped me to paint an honest picture of the current language scenario.
Is it as much a book for adults as it is for children?
There is nothing like an only children’s book. Even adults can read them. A book like this needs to be read by all age groups, because everyone — parents, educators, students, linguists, can contribute towards the preservation of our languages.
What were some of the information that fascinated you along the way?
The alarming rate at which languages are dying, the history of our language families, how languages are being rediscovered, how languages evolve, and most importantly, how endangered and even extinct languages are being revitalised — there’s so much more I’m yet to learn about our languages and that fascinates me the most.
While many of us speak our mother tongue, many don’t read or write the same. What kind of threat do we face because of that? What happens to the literature in that case?
That’s true. While it’s always better to know how to read and write in our mother tongue, it’s more important to speak it because languages are considered extinct when their last speaker ceases to exist. A classic example is the case of the Ahom language which was completely replaced by Assamiya. While no one speaks it, its script and stories exist in the Ahom script. But since no one knows how to speak it or knows how it sounds, no one can read it either. Having said this, most languages in our country are only spoken, which is, they don’t have a written form. And hence, there are no books written in those thousands of languages, which are still unknown to us.
What would you want children to take away from this book?
While it’s absolutely fine to speak in English — it is our lingua franca and undeniably the language that brings the world closer together, it’s essential that we keep our mother languages alive at the same time and it’s possible. By having conversations, sharing stories, and singing songs in our mother languages, we are ensuring that the language and the wisdom it carries stays around for generations to come.
Book: Taatung Tatung
Pages: 167
Publisher: Puffin Books
Price: Rs 299