A Language Unspoken

2022 9th - 12th Grade Prose Winner

     I grip the arm of my chair and tap my foot impatiently, willing my thoughts to slow
down, and my mind to quiet. I glance up at my dad, who is holding the phone to his ear, talking
rapidly in Hindi. I close my eyes and try to translate his sentences, connect the puzzle that is the
scattered words I have grown up hearing. I can only translate a few fragments of a sentence that
shouldn’t sound so broken.

     I shouldn’t be this tense, really. But my palms begin to sweat as he hands the phone over
to me, raising his eyebrows in a reassuring look. I clear my throat and hold the phone up to my
ear.

     “Namaste, Grandma,” I say, looking up at my dad, who nods his head encouragingly.

     My grandma responds, and I furrow my eyebrows in concentration as she speaks in a mix
between English and Hindi. But, as usual, we can only get past the “how are yous" and “I’m
doing wells" before the bridge between the two languages falls away and we’re both left
standing at the edge of our mountain.

     As the words start to get broken and my throat becomes tight, I look back up to my dad.
The words I wish I could say but can’t flood my mind, taunting me. After we sit in silence for
thirty seconds, I muster up a final “Namaste, Grandma, it was nice talking to you,” before
handing the phone back to my dad.

     The language barrier between my grandma and I has been there since the day I began
speaking in English rather than Hindi. As I grew up in America, and my grandma continued
living in India, the barrier grew both in size and strength. It grew stronger by each blow too, my
frustration and defeat growing at each failed attempt to learn Hindi. It felt so simple; all I had to
do was learn a language, and then I could connect with her. I could know where I came from, the
history of my family, the key part of me that felt so hidden, so pushed away from my American
identity.

     In the eighth grade, when my parents took my sister and I to India, I was excited to see
my grandma again in person. I felt determined to find a way to talk to her, tell her about my life
and hear about hers. But the fact was, we still had no way to talk. As I talked slowly, willing her
to understand my English, she sat still, eyebrows buried both in concentration and confusion. I
dug my nails into my palms as my mom came, standing in between my grandma and I, acting as
the translator. Though it helped the conversation flow better, it suddenly felt forced and
stiffening. Why could I not speak to my own grandma without help?

    For a while, I felt nervous, ashamed to talk to her. When we spoke on the phone, I often
imagined her sitting down in the dusty orange couch of the living room back in India, phone to
her ear, gazing at the picture of my family and I taped to the wall. I imagined her thinking about
her son, my father, who moved to the United States, built a life there, and had daughters whose
only connection to their roots was their browned skin. I imagined what I must sound like to her;
my heavy American accent, compared to my broken Hindi, with the syllables stretched in all the
wrong places. I was embarrassed of my English, but too ashamed to even try speaking in Hindi. I
felt trapped, my two identities closing in on me on both sides, crushing me.

     I still feel like this today. Angry at my parent’s failure to teach me Hindi, and my
ever-growing sense of defeat. But I’ve also realized something else. A language isn’t the only
form of communication. Language isn’t the only way of showing love.

     Every year, my grandma sends me a birthday card. It seems little, really, but every year
my eyes scan the small stack of cards for the one sent by her. Even though I have never seen it
before, I always know when the card is from her. It is always beautiful, intricate, with flowers
blossoming on the paper. And every year, she writes me a message in English, with the simple
phrase “Happy birthday,” but I know the words also mean everything else she doesn’t know how
to say.

     I have also begun to reflect on memories from my trips to India, about the time I spent
with my grandma. I remember sitting next to her, racking my brain for something I knew how to
say in Hindi, while she silently waited. Then, I remember as she suddenly took my hand and
unfolded it, her hand supporting the underside of my hand as my palm faced the ceiling. She then
unfolded her hand too, and held it directly next to mine. I sat in confusion for a second, until I
understood. The lines carved into our palms were exactly identical, as if I had held up my palm
to the mirror. I looked up at her and her eyes crinkled as she smiled, and I smiled too. There was
something special about knowing that no matter how far away I lived, no matter how little Hindi
I knew, we understood each other enough to appreciate the beauty of the fact that I was her
granddaughter, and she was my grandmother.

     I remember the reassuring grip of her hand as I walked with her on the streets, the strokes
of her pen as I watched her draw, the familiarity of the food she cooked me. We didn’t need a
language to appreciate each other’s presence. It was in those moments that the barrier crumpled
away, revealing everything I couldn’t see before. For so long, I connected my failure to learn the
language of my roots to my connection with my culture. In my eyes, my inability to speak Hindi
and communicate with my family made me less “Indian.” I struggled with my identity- rather
than feeling like a mix of two cultures, I felt that I had none. It didn’t matter. Though I never
entirely overcame the language barrier, I overcame its importance.