I have always wanted to experience newer, exciting things.

 

Be it an obsession I can't stop thinking about—the first shot of vodka I see people my age trying. And for an intellectual, my life would be pretty useless as I have nothing to offer to this burning world; and to the poets, I might look like someone they'll reject on the first read. But this is the best part about myself: people don't want to engage with me. And as lonely as it sounds, it feels better to know that people already see you as a disaster.

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*

 

When I was young, my mother had to leave for several weeks to complete her studies. My sister and I were living with our grandmother and aunts. My nani is a great singer, so I would ask her to sing songs until I fell asleep lying on her arm, cocooning as if she was the closest I could get to my mother. She would sing, *"pile radh ke... pile radh ke ki gauan rusiyan pahado toh aaiyan... ki kacha dudh pile radh ke." I don't even remember the exact words, but I remember the memory of words, their shadows falling on my mind as if a big tree has finally decided to not be a tree anymore but something more—something that doesn't bear fruit, but resistance.

 

*Nani: grandmother

*A Himachali song of the Himachal Pradesh state of India asking Lord Krishna to drink milk.

During that two-month stay, I learnt more about love than anything else. I wanted to be more. I wanted to be the tree. I wanted to be the flower growing at the hem of the tree. And my aunts let me. Either way, I was growing—and now when I look back—I see myself inside a vestibule of time. A lacuna of memories. I think I wanted to stay that way and carry this part of my life with me wherever I went.

But what does a bird know of the ground and its misery? What do I know of freezing lakes and fishes when none of us are where we wanted to be? These tiny, sprouted moments that I revisit, I keep watering so they grow and never leave.

 

I look at life backwards. I see my future through the lens of the past, and in the past, I was loved ferociously.

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*

Language has failed me and I have failed language, a constant tussle between who I should be and where I come from.

 

I have been told that my English sounds like a villager. I was embarrassed—the only thing I have learnt being *himachali is that the accent grows into our bodies as we grow up. *Pahari was evident in the way I said, “Wait, let me check my purse,” the 't' of Wait trailing behind like a child holding his mother’s *dupatta.

 

I have nothing against the person who told me this. But my roots grow out from my mouth, pointing towards Himachal no matter where I go.

 

*himachali: Peoples from the Himachal Pradesh state of India

*Pahari: Language of the peoples from the mountainous region of Pahari, India

*dupatta: Long, shawl-like scarf traditionally worn by women in India; stole

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When I went to college in Pune, I was surrounded by people from all over India. Oh, how I wanted to keep myself from withering away into unidentifiable words and syllables. I remember my nani singing to me, *“paarli baniya mor je boleo, amma ji inne more nindar gwai ho," and I kept humming it as I walked through the lonely grounds of my college, looking at the sky, believing Nani could hear my sound from Pune to Namhol.

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*A peacock sings in distant forest, mother it has disturbed my sleep

 

I wanted to hide my Pahari accent. I would speak slowly, breathing a little more between the words, always trying not to stretch the sounds more than the distance between Pune and Himachal.
 

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*

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Nani has been a very strong influence in my life.

 

During my childhood, I would try to memorize the lyrics of the Pahari songs she sang, yet failed. Nani speaks to me in pure Pahari, some words out of my grasp, but her stories––always within reach, always understandable. Throughout the years I have seen my aunts getting married and Nani singing *suhaag with tears in her eyes. There is a peculiarity in how they are sang: the last lines stretched like elastic bands, words elongated until all the women end up laughing together. Their laughter is melodious, too––the chirping voices a testament of womanhood and the shared experiences of it.
 

*Pahari songs celebrating marriage

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Language has a sweet-and-sour taste similar to *khatta, which my family would eat together. Something of a ritual in winters where all my aunts sat and Nani made it with chilies, ginger, coriander leaves, *jeera, and other spices, though I can’t remember all of them. But I remember Nani laughing, my aunts dividing khatta into equal pieces. I know—language doesn’t have to always be about words, but communication. We understood each other. More than the words, our silences collided in a way that enabled us to know what the other person had to say.

 

*khatta: citrus fruit

*jeera: cumin seeds

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Yet now after such long years of fateful existence, all I dream of is a trip back to my childhood;  making sand castles by putting the sand into the steel glass, pretending that I am on a beach. Until I finally did go there, with my grandmother, aunt and uncle, I was transported back to my childhood, but this time I was eating *sadhya rather than homemade *gulab jamun and *shakarpara. Sometimes I don't want English to ruin what vernacular language has to offer.
 

*sadhya: Meal of Kerala origin traditionally served on a banana leaf

*gulab jamun: A sweet confectionary from the Indian subcontinent

*shakarpara: Indian sweet snack

 

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*

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My parents talk to me in Pahari.

 

My mother makes beni roti, which has *bhangjeeri and *shakkar and melts in my mouth as my taste buds drown in its aftertaste. She says, *“aaija hun bani gi roti" when I wake up to the sound of her singing songs, those occasional, lucky days. ​

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Ma knows what language can do to a person. How it can wreck people, how it can mend people. She has seen her daughter try to become what she can never be. She has seen her daughter failing to mingle with English speaking *janta, who know exactly where and when punctuation is wrong, where grammar fails, and which sentence structure is less effective.

 

*bhangjeeri: Aromatic herb also known by the Japanese, 'shiso'

*shakkar: Natural palm sugar; jaggery

*"Come, food is ready"

*janta: crowd

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Pahari doesn’t care. I once said, *“aaijaon ghra" on a call from Pune and my mother replied, *“ai jaa,” a sentence too short to be a sentence but a phrase, incomplete in its voice but full of affection.

 

*"Can I come home?"

*"Yes, come."​

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We are always told that people shouldn’t quit or they become losers.

 

I quit college and my mother accepted me; still in Pahari she says, laughingly, *“tijo milni ni meri jedi mummi.” I agree.

 

*"You won’t get a mother like me"

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Pahari has cocooned me at times, helped me realize that I am a villager, of course, who speaks English with an accent—but I am my mother’s desperate prayers, too. I wonder when she prays, if God understands. If God is multilingual; if he knows when I love, I love in a language I was graced with.

I have stuck to this life like a wound to skin. I have persisted like a conversation that wants to end but another keeps dragging it out. Yet, even after all these years of poetic misery, I still have my childhood to hold. I still have my mother's dupatta that reminds me of her every time she has to leave. I hold on to the memory of my father's bursting laughter. And even though I am only a collection of memories, some spilling out, some so internal, the mentioning of them making me uncomfortable, I will make do with the present.

And language has stuck to me, to all of us, like a river that holds its water in desperation.

 

There is a rhythm to Pahari that I can't quite point out. I have sung songs to my lover in Pahari as he slowly falls asleep. I have heard him sing songs to me in *Dogri that I don’t understand, yet I giggle like a teenager in love. I think in the end, language becomes a story, all of us with our own versions. I think this is how I want to remember my origin. My tongue is a compass, and it will always point to the village I come from. And on days I fail, I will always have my anger to bring me back. If language is resistance, anger is the desire to not give it up.

 

*Dogri: The traditional language of the Dogras, living primarily in the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. 

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Of course I am angry. And the world is ruined. And my friends have left me. Of course, nobody reads about average experiences. Who wants to know that I recite internal dialogues when I go to the store? Who wants to know that, sometimes, I want people to like me because I haven't found the courage yet to like myself, that I have failed in my attempts to impress people through my words?

 

People yearn to hear life-changing experiences. And I am devoid of those. This is just how an ordinary girl walks into an extraordinary world to find her voice nowhere. The same old tale of one who loved the world too much; the same story of when something becomes too sweet, it starts to taste bitter.​​​​​

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