In Retrospect

She grew up my mother, speaking Konkani, Kannada, Tulu, and god knows what other languages. But she never spoke a word of these to her children. I find that odd. And I believe it was entirely intentional. But didn’t she realise that if we didn’t get caught one way, we were bound to get caught the other?
We grew up speaking English, English, and English. Even the maids spoke in English to us, our Mangalore cousins spoke in English to us, our grandparents didn’t speak to us at all and people gave us queer looks and said, ‘Don’t you speak anything but ? ’ And then gave us pitying looks with not a little condescension.
But in retrospect I think this is what she wanted to give us. She wanted to make life easier for us, not difficult like her’s was. She was thrown into an English medium college straight from a school that was ‘supposed’ to be English medium and was expected to do well.
We speak now ‘perfect’ English and our accents are relatively clear. We don’t make obvious errors in grammar maybe in spelling. We do try to remember that it’s lose and not loose. :)
But we lost didn’t we. We lost the chance to make fun of the mallus with them being right there and not understanding a word. And we probably lost other things like maybe, culture and maybe just being able to talk to you family.

If somebody was to ask me if I was Mangalorean, I’d probably say yes. But when I think about it, it isn’t really true is it? I don’t speak the language, I don’t know anything about the culture and I can’t cook the food.
The only things I know are that they have ranging from mildly to very insulting sayings for every occasion and that sea water and well water mustn’t mix. Another one of their loaded sayings.

[Thought dismissed]