Tamilan

Tamil.

One of my most intimate friends, now very far away. This is very obvious from the language this post is written in, and the thoughts from which these words are derived from.

Our parents brought us up speaking Tamil – the only person I began to speak very early on in English was my elder brother. I even always spoke to my sister in Tamil (who now rightly has found her destiny as a Tamil teacher). My 

thoughts were in Tamil, my inner voice spoke Tamil, and my most intimate conversations with Allah were in Tamil.

I did very well in school for Tamil. I took Higher Tamil, mind you. Scored straight As and was dubbed “Tamizh Pulavar” by my mom.

Then in JC, I was exempted from Tamil due to the Higher Tamil thing. I guess that’s when the de-Tamilisation of me started.

I still spoke in Tamil at home – but the demands of General Paper in JC, the need for more “sophistication in thinking” in University lead me to increasingly think in English, grapple with complex concepts for which I could not find any meaning in Tamil. This was more due to my limited knowledge of the language than anything else.

Then I began to actually sense my brain translating my English thoughts to Tamil whenever I spoke to my parents or folks who spoke to me in Tamil.

I knew something was wrong, and I always wanted to correct it by picking up that Tamil novella and reading it end to end. But it was a time when I had trouble focusing on English language books, so the idea was dropped.

I attended the 2012 Tamil Language Festival launch event last Sunday, where many personalities spoke about the marvel of the Tamil language, the beauty and wonder of the Thirukkural and many other aspects. I felt so far away from it, but deep inside, I know that it’s only a matter of will, and time, that I can reconnect to my mothertongue.