Miscellaneous

Here and Somewhere Else

By maisnon

Chinese Fishing Nets, originally uploaded by maisnon.

The other day, a new friend wanted me to explain my family's history to a small group as some sort of icebreaker. I balked, but not out of embarassment, or any ill will. I know that other people hear the tale, with its cast of characters comprised of countries and continents, and think my family cosmopolitan, or intriguing. I can understand that - my family members have been born into, learned and lost so many languages.

Non-desis look at "the brown" and think, "Indian", not realizing that that can also mean Fijian, Guyanese, Dutch, South African, Malaysian, etc. Even desis, it seems, expect a fairly linear progression from "there" to "here" (possibly with the obligatory stop in Merry Olde England.)

Like hair texture and parents, we always want what we don't have. I spent a good part of my childhood visiting my father's far-flung siblings, and I'm so lucky to have had that opportunity. But, what I wouldn't have given to grow up with my cousins, to feel a part of a larger family. I always felt like my little nuclear family group was the American branch, as isolated as a lunar colony.

I have a passive understanding of Malayalam. This means that I can, for the most part, understand spoken Malayalam, but I can't produce any. It requires some very deliberate effort for me to find the words. Also, while I will understand a conversation about cleaning the kitchen, I'll get completely lost if it is about something theoretical or abstract. I understand "house Malayalam." And, as I discovered while traveling south India last year, it's heavily tempered with Tamil.

I wonder what it would have been like to grow up around family: would my Malayalam be better? Would someone have insisted I speak it? (I once asked my mother why she never taught us Hindi (my father, the Malaysian, never learned it.) She said, 'For Heaven's sake, why would you want to know HINDI?!" Um, because it might be a little more useful than being able to understand you yelling at me to do the laundry in Malayalam??)

Writing this, I feel ungrateful - and I'm not. I'm glad that dim sum and pisang goreng are family food. When I recognize a word in Arabic, the mental translation is in French because I took Arabic lessons in French. I'm not ungrateful, but I am wistful.

Full post as published by maisnon on September 05, 2007 (boomark / email).