Roots

I often feel part of a large banyan tree spreading its branches out. I am one of those branches that have spread out too far and late into the nights the roots sing to me. It tells me to read more of Tagore, listen to the music that’s making waves in my homeland. It tells me literature is best enjoyed in the language you grew up with; music is best enjoyed when you don’t have to struggle to understand what’s being said.

As I look around me, I realize the banyan trees are falling all around us. Growing up in a cosmopolitan environment, we grow up today in a strange patchwork of cultures where probably our mother tongue, leave alone Sanskrit is not even uttered once during the year. The language we all speak in is English as it becomes the language of business and we want our children to know it and converse in it, even if it means they no longer know the rhymes that we grew up with as kids, no longer do they fly kites without a rhyme or reason.

A new form of linguistic imperialism seems to take over the world and it strikes hard at the roots. Maybe the future branches will remember where they came from but they may no longer be connected to their roots. The question is not one of jingoistic nationalism but rather a question of loss. Learning a new language is no longer a passion, like most things around us, it’s just good business sense.

As it happens, somewhere deep down we feel determined to not let our roots wither. Our accents remind us where we come from. We realize that our idiosyncrasies were made up by our upbringing and somehow there’s a promise that we will never let them go away; for better or for worse.

And that’s the last rebellion before winter comes and the roots wither.