Of being disproportionately mixed

I am pretty sure I have mentioned this on the blog, Mint’s native language, what we call ‘mother tongue’ in India, is Telugu. However, his family has been in Tamil Nadu for literally hundreds of years and the kind of Telugu they speak is almost unrecognizable when compared to the authentic Telugu. Also, for whatever reason, he identifies more with the Tamil language and speaks it far more fluently than Telugu.

Most of his friends have no clue about his native language and he prefers telling people he is a Tam guy. This greatly irks his parents who feel he needs to take more pride in his roots. Mint on the other hand, says they are hypocritical in their thought process, because they themselves only converse in Tamil. Not Telugu.

We have always dealt with a Tamil – Telugu war. When I got married, his parents wanted me to learn Telugu. He said that if I have to learn a language, he insisted it had to be Tamil. Now the fact that I learnt neither of them is a different story. Because really, that guy has had little interest in teaching me. He was perfectly comfortable talking to me in Hindi and English. All the Tamil I know and have learnt has been thanks to the effort I have put in on my own. And while I can understand a significant amount, I am still sad I can’t hold conversations on my own. But unfortunately I don’t have the bandwidth to self learn or go for classes and if Mint took more effort in teaching me, it would have helped.

I think my in laws gave up on me learning the language. And then Cotton and Candy were born and the language monster raised its head again. After another debate on what language the kids should learn and going back and forth between Tamil and Telugu, my in laws agreed to let them learn Tamil. They stayed with us for a whole 6 months and would talk to the kids in Tamil. Cotton and Candy were picking up the words. And then they left.

I expected Mint to continue talking to them in Tamil. He never took the effort with me. But he had a golden opportunity to do it with the kids. I definitely wanted to pass on the gift of language to them. From my end, I spoke to the kids in Hindi. Again, I have never exposed the kids to my mother tongue, which is a mix of Punjabi, Sindhi and Multani. I thought they would benefit more from knowing Hindi and that’s one language I have a strong connect with anyway, because, Bollywood.

So I took the effort to speak to the kids in Hindi. And surprisingly, it took more effort than I anticipated. English has been my comfort language and the language I think in. Hindi is very close to my hear but really, intuitively I am inclined to speak in English. Anyway, the efforts were paying off and Cotton and Candy were beginning to grasp the langauge well. Also, we spent several months in Mumbai and having a full time helper there who only spoke to the kids in Hindi helped immensely.

But what I began noticing over time is that when I spoke to the kids in Hindi, Mint would continue the conversation with them in Hindi. Every time I pointed it out to him and asked him to revert to Tamil, he would say that it seems unnatural to talk to the kids in one language and me in another. Eventually, he had fully switched to talking to the kids in Hindi. I was not too pleased, but he seemed to be supremely lazy in putting n the effort.

My in-laws were aghast. Cotton and Candy were not learning any language from their end and were developing a proficiency in Hindi. In my head, I could hear them screaming, ‘This is why we were so against the marriage, we knew it would result in us not being able to pass on our culture and heritage’. I have told them several times, this is Mint’s fault. Please blame your son. I would love our kids to know all the possible languages they can, I don’t know why he is such a lazy bugger. And I know a part of them believes me. They know their son. But the other part of me keeps thinking, what if they think this is their evil daughter in law’s fault? One who controls everything and calls all the shots.

Let me talk about the current happenings in our life now. Every time we are talking to my in-laws on a video call, Cotton and Candy keep switching to Hindi. Not only do my in-laws not know Hindi, this is a classic way of rubbing salt into their wounds. My in-laws ask them a question in English, they reply in Hindi. Jeez. Ayyo. Jale pe namak chidakna. I cringe every single time. This, despite me warning the kids before we start the call. Every time, I remind them. “Please talk to Thatha and Nanamma only in Engligh, okay?”. They say yes to me. But somewhere in the middle of the conversation, I see them slipping into Hindi.

And while I stress and feel guilty and apologetic, I see my idiot husband grinning at my panicked state. I genuinely feel sorry for my in-laws. This is not how I expected my mixed kids to turn out. I mean, I would have liked an equal contribution and our cultural mix to reflect more evenly. Unfortunately, the contribution of the other half is not in my hands.