My First Language

“Amma or ma” (mother)- If I recollect correctly, this was the first word I uttered in my mother tongue, I learned from my mother and spoke. I am proud to have born in the land of Tamil, one of the oldest languages in the world. The claim is that it is a five thousand years old language, but recent inventions and findings prove that it could have been older. I started learning this beautiful language in school, and it was a memorable experience.

In the beginning, I learned alphabets, graduated to reading and writing in the great language. The small stories about Tennali Raman, Aladdin and his magic lamp, the great story of King Vikramaditiya and the Vedalam, stories of the dynasties who ruled the land of Tamil - the Cheras, Cholas and Pandiyas intrigued me. After I reached the sixth standard, I started learning Tamil literature, poems, and about the great poets who lived thousands of years ago. When I read a few portions of Ramayana by one of the greatest poets “Kambar”, I was wonderstruck with the depth of his narrative about Rama and Sita. Reading the couplets of the divine poet “Thiruvalluvar” made me wonder how come this man with his wisdom could give guidelines for human life in every discipline two thousand years ago. Then came the freedom fighters’ generation of poets, and “Bharati” was outstanding in his poems mixed with patriotism.

During my adulthood, I enjoyed reading thousands of pages of historical novels by the great writers of fifties - “Kalki” and Chandilyan. In those days, only movies and radios used to be the best outlets for youngsters like us. The songs we used to hear on the radio were great fun. There is no second opinion that Kannadasan was amongst one of the greatest poets in the world. His talent for writing lyrics for different situations was highly amazing. The melodies he rendered from fifties to eighties were unforgettable and will remain forever until the language exists on the planet. A researcher from abroad in his thesis about Kannadasan mentioned that his songs are immortal. Further, he mentioned that if Kannadasan would have born in the west, he would have beaten all the great poets of his time in English. I will be modest in saying that after Tagore,he deserved the Nobel Prize in literature.I feel fortunate enough and blessed to have grown while enjoying my great and beloved mother tongue. I feel I attained the real sense of being born as a human being.

But the joy was short-lived.It was a proud moment for me when I got selected as an officer and joined the Indian Navy in the year 1979. But I did not realize that I would be destined and distanced from the language I was attached intellectually to. That time the joy of getting a permanent central government job prevailed over the sadness of losing my touch with my beloved language forever. Today almost after forty years, I miss my mother tongue… What miss, I starve for the feeling of it. English had become my father tongue.

Today I speak, read and write in English very fluently but I still cannot express myself in English as I used to do with ease in Tamil; the divine language which I received from my mother’s womb. I wrote a fiction work (50,000 words), almost ten small stories in English, writing another fiction (60,000 words) but all the efforts were below average. The reason behind it is that my thoughts, my storyline come in my mother tongue and then I convert them into this alien language. Once again, I needed the help of professional editors for creative editing, and my thoughts, emotions and stories got transformed into a book but not to the fullest satisfaction of mine. Had English been my mother tongue, all my stories would have become best sellers. I look helplessly at some of the famous writers who write in Tamil, getting many awards.

Slowly in modern times we are losing our mother tongue just like Mother Nature, family values and forests. My children studied in Hindi medium. They can converse in Tamil but cannot read and write. My father used to insist on my wife to teach them Tamil, but on the contrary, she learned Hindi to teach them in their primary classes. My children lost the opportunity of learning one of the oldest languages, its culture and literature. I wonder most of the time whether they can write stories in English and outclass the English writers? Their destiny left them without a mother language. The language was not in their blood and not passed on through the womb. Slowly the modern society is losing the values of the mother tongue. In this bargain, we have lost so many wonderful languages.

There are some great values or positive unification on maintaining one language as well. I went as a Naval officer on deputation to erstwhile USSR (Russia) for commissioning a new class of submarine (877 EKM) in the year 1984-85.They only teach you about the submarines in Russian language. Initially we had Russian language course for five months and only after clearing the language course we were allowed to continue with professional training. The place where I got trained was part of Eastern Europe, still they never liked to speak in English. Now in Russia, there is only one language for all states that unites them. Unfortunately, in our country we have different languages and it’s difficult to get one national language.

In the next generations to come, we may lose the value of mother tongue. But the values are protected in few countries like Russia, Japan and China. But we Indians are at the verge of losing the value of mother tongue as we are losing the values of mother land.Modernization and migration to developed countries make us to switch over to father tongue- English. The number of ethnic languages are on the decline.

To conclude, I regret for my children and their generations to come that they will not be able to enjoy the immense pleasure I enjoyed from my mother tongue.

Hope the young generation reads my story and tries to find a solution so that we do not lose our mother tongue. If we do not pay attention to this factor, our values, culture and native languages will slowly erode. Our literature, cultural heritage will slowly decline and become extinct only to go down the earth and to be found on excavation by later generations.

I am more bothered about this state of affairs because I miss my mother tongue and became a victim of modernization. My heart bleeds and sadness creeps in from the very thought of losing my mother tongue TAMIL which existed as one of the oldest languages in the world before Sanskrit and Hebrew.