मैं और मेरी मातृभाषा

The transliteration tool is too dumb for me to complete this blog post in Hindi, but really - how long has it been since I wrote something, read a book, or even took an exam in Hindi!

While my short stay in Berlin is full of interesting (embarrassing?) anecdotes, and a blog is long overdue, I thought of writing something about, well a "native language identity crisis" (for lack of a better phrase!) that has afflicted me for some time now. Yang and Phil are friends that I made in my building (names changed!) a few weeks back, we hang out together sometimes in the cafe on weekends and have discussions on a wide variety of topics. Yang is in her early 20s and comes from South Korea, while Phil is in his late 20s and lives in Bavaria (Germany) Of course our native languages are Korean, German and Hindi(?) respectively, but most of our conversations are in English for obvious reasons.

I have always considered Hindi to be my first language in spite of the fact that I am a Maharashtrian, and I can speak decent Marathi; and I was rather disappointed when we stopped studying Hindi at school in the 10th grade (English was taught all the way till 12th grade) Medical College was all in English and there was a lot of John Grisham and Robin Cook along the way, but I cant remember reading anything by Premchand or Harvansh Rai Bachchan other than the small book chapters in School.

Yang finds this (and a lot of other stuff too, if I might add!) weird, and cant imagine growing up without reading books and novels in Korean. Phil agrees, and after a lengthy discussion "informs" me that my "native" language is English. Some of his arguments, and valid ones at that are strong enough for me to make an MS Office Table out of it


I have two problems with this - Firstly, my English is just not good enough for a "native"and secondly, I resent it. I might not have shown the same respect towards my native language as Yang and Phil, but well it's never too late!

I am asking my parents to gift me 'Madhushala' on my next Birthday!