Blend

Everyday our lives repeat as we eat, sleep and speak. Yet what we do every single day isn’t done as consciously as when we do something different each day. Some of us watch TV while eating and others update their blog while eating (my kind of multitasking). But if one day, we do not eat we will then be conscious of its lack and not when it is there. Although, for sleep, there is just sleep. You can’t multitask while sleeping and it is necessary to be less conscious while performing this function. Considering sleep as an exception, it is quite ironic at how the things we do everyday with our body seems to take a backseat in our mind.

This realisation occurred to me while I was contemplating the language I and my family have been speaking in since forever. Being born in one state (each Indian state has its own form of communication) in a family that was too brought up in the same state but our origin lying in another, the words we utter is a blend of the languages of both. My origin lies in Kerala yet my heart lies in Tamilnadu (TN). Born in TN in a family where my mom and dad were both brought up there, I grew up in a land of another believing it to be mine. I spoke both malayalam and tamil as I filled in words of tamil when my malayalam vocabulary became wordless. And thus we spoke, a blend of two, a language complete with two incomplete languages. I never did realise this until I had to speak to a hard-core tamilian or malayali in either of the languages. I realised how I was conscious of what I uttered, frantically searching for words in malayalam where I usually used tamil instead. And thus, almost always, I switch back to talking in english for what came to me unconsciously didn’t come to me consciously. However, at home my mind is at peace as what I utter, I don’t have to notice, I don’t have to be alert and can say what my mind wants to say in the language of my heart. Although a mix of two it still is to me one language that I know.