Memoir

          Entering the room, I could hear the TV turned on with my sister watching her favourite Hindi series, Pavitra Rishta. Humming along with the pleasing tune of the title track, I walked step by step to the couch and dropped into a cross- legged position. “Pure Relationship.” The only two words I understood was the title’s literal translation. A great progress to me personally, as memorizing the meaning for those two words took me a lot of practice. Oh! And my mother’s scolding for asking her the definition, a million times! “What are you doing here?” a question that interrupted my memories, was posed by my sister who was still gazing at the TV with the remote gripped firmly like as if someone might steal it from her. What was I doing here? It took 10 minutes into the 50th episode that finally made me interrogate myself on what my presence here signified. I didn’t understand what the actors were talking about but, something made me sit there frozen, and watch the whole episode. Later on, comprehending the characters’ dialogues took me a very long time with the effort of my Hindi classes at school, and my own free time spent time speaking with my father. First of all, it wasn’t proper. Second of all, I reply to a question with a completely different answer, unrelated to the context! Once, I went out with my sister and her friends. Little did I know that Hindi would sprout out from thin air to make me the odd one out from the know-it-all group of scholars. Vigorously shaking my hand, a didi (older sister) asks me in a wave of fluent Hindi, “How are you? Do you feel hungry?” and a lot of other stuff that I couldn’t make out. Me being myself, just smiled and nodded my head as an appropriate response. The rest of the day went as slow as a snail… with extra load on its back. All the new terminology and vocabulary made me want to puke but I couldn’t possible mess up the neat floor of Pizza Hut. A cloud of consciousness blew in, attacking me with thoughts. Thoughts of how vulnerable and powerless I was in such an unfamiliar circumstance. A decision made back then never changed from my side. Never in any scenario, would I remain clueless of the situation at hand. I would struggle to at least grasp familiar words and use the best of my capabilities to work out possible meanings for it. I wouldn’t be helpless in front of anyone, at least not for language limitations. Since then, Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil, Korean, French and now even Spanish. I’ve pushed my limits further every time, expanding my knowledge and vocabulary for each language. The sky’s the limit? No. Speaking, writing, reading and understanding 7,099 languages, and creating another 10 of them is the limit in this world. 

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