As a writer, language is one of the most important relationships in my life. I share intimacy with it, which can be visible in my writing, but mostly in the way I push my tongue to make a sound.

My first word was "Mamma–" in English, not in my mother tongue Sindhi or my national language Hindi. My Indian parents did not belong to India. They both lived in English-speaking countries. And so naturally the language my family made conversations in at home, was mostly English.

We moved to India when I was about a month old. In my years at school, I was bullied continuously for speaking English. Teachers would be proud of me, especially because I studied in a convent school with an in-built Church and a graveyard. But this also created a rift between my friends and me. They'd mock me for not having an Indian mother tongue. I speak Hindi fluently when I want to or can. I have a habit of using the hybrid of these two languages, popularly known as Hinglish, of mingling them while conversing.

My classmates would always ask me "what language do you speak at home?" For them, it was always Marathi, Marwadi, Gujarati, Tamil or Hindi. Most of their parents were native to some part of the country,mostly the same village or city, as most of them followed the social rules of marrying within their community. You see, that was never the case for me. My parents have disparate backgrounds too– my father being a Sindhi-Punjabi and my mother being a Bengali.

When I started writing, I could only do so in English, my natural language, the one I grew up speaking from sunrise to before bed. I know three other Indian languages, in which I have not necessarily been the bread and buttered, but rather in which conversations took place around me. Learning those languages were more of an absorbing process, It was more of adopting to my environment. But then again, I feel a detachment, an unbearable pull against all of them.

"Is English your first language?"

I was asked this question once after a writer read one of the stories I'd written. She helped me scrutinize and mention all the mistakes possible in my writing. The word choice in my writing has often attracted attractive criticism. But answering that question is almost physically uncomfortable. Because it is hard for me to call English my third language, which in reality, it is. Whenever someone comments something about my command of the language or corrects me, I feel an inevitable upset raising inside me. Not because I think I am the absolute master of it, but because I feel that I've always belonged to it, and so it too belonged to me— the way a child imagines knowing their parents. Yet languishes to comprehend them.

English is not just my literary language. It is the ultimate language of my existence. It has introduced me to the literature of the world. I've read French, Russian and Italian literature in English. The first book that ever came into my hands was in English.

I've always felt so rooted in this tongue, yet there are times that I fail in that, too. I do not find it to be as exquisite as before. The tension that kept us moving together suddenly repels. Today, I feel a slippage between us. The words that used to guide me have retreated. And this makes me realize that I will never really fit into any language, especially English, one that never was mine in the first place. By definition, I will forever be an alien– an immigrant forever.

I've never really used a dictionary. Almost literally.

Of course, I look up words I need on the internet. It helps me. It is quicker access. But I mostly feel the need for it when writing.

This perhaps proves my lack of responsibility with this language, a lack of understanding. I fail to understand the power of the dictionary. And maybe this is why I never really felt the desire for this language, the urge to keep on learning and perfecting my command. Not that the language needs me, but a human will always need a language. Because what are we without it? How would one express oneself? How would one be able to feel sad or happy or angry?

Words. They are the greatest stimuli. But there are no words without a language. Language is the key to the world, to other people's hearts, war and peace. Language is everything: the genesis of literature.

My relationship with all the other languages is based on betrayal.

As I mentioned, my first language is Sindhi– a language I've never really conversed in; let alone write or read. My only relationship with this culture and language is food. A very handful of elders in my family can speak it without any hesitation. And when I hear them talk to each other, I am astonished, by how alien my mother tongue sounds to my ears. My relationship here, is in clear absentia.

Even though Sindhi is not necessarily a foreign language to me, in technicality, it is more distant to me, than I can imagine. Yet, I've never felt the urge to attempt to learn or even understand it. On the contrary, I've been yearning to learn languages that may never be in need for me. Italian and French. Why? I have no clue about it myself.

Instead of looking for my mother tongue, I'm looking to root myself into several father tongues. English, Gujarati, Marathi– the known languages; and Italian and French– the tongues I wish to dwell in.

•~•~•~•

There is this notion of slow cooking in India. Indian food consists of a lot of layering of ingredients and spices. But the flavors can only be elevated while the heat is minimal. The low heat lets the simmering happen beautifully.

In the same way, reading needs to be slow, and limited. Not aggressive. If one reads too fast, they can't hear the words correctly, and hence, they misunderstand. Slow reading means one gives time to the words in a book to let them do their magic. There's a particular pace at which books should be read, at least for me. It helps to comprehend and appreciate the writing, elegant or not entirely. The language of grief in some books are too grave to entirely devour in one go.

Today, I read more validly, and consciously. Today, reading is more than an escape or entertainment. Nevertheless, I believe any reader would say that they will never be able to read the way they did as a child. The ultimate pleasure of reading has diminished.

I read more radically. I put a great deal of concentration into understanding the characters, the stories, the elements, and most importantly, the words. I yearn to understand the words and dream of using the mesmerizing ones for my writing. I want to know their meanings, understand them, and twist and turn them into metaphors, that unfortunately have many times been misunderstood. I am a slow reader. But slow reading needs a certain kind of dignity, and respect towards the book. There is an underlying grace in reading so patiently. It is an immersive process.

Writing to me is a form of reading too. I cannot help but read it aloud while scribbling down things that haunt my mind. This helps me understand my work, to check whether my own words make sense to myself before it does to others. And the sound of English leaving my lips lets me set the tone.

In English, I am myself. I don't feel lost as I did in the other languages I know. I feel a sense of authority. I feel at home.

The problem with a language is that it will never provide me with the luxury of comfort. I will forever be looking behind me, trying to understand or question myself. With language, one can never stop learning. It is generous enough to give.

This may be one of the reasons that I find absolute comfort in this disorientation. This slippage that forms between English and me feels like a good tension. Along with bothering me, it makes me feel as if I am at the beginning again, a student, an orphan, a writer in poverty. And in some ways, it helps me to keep reworking my writings.

I have always felt that a language I've been speaking ever since I was a child, should be known to me, traceable, perfect in a sense to how much I already know. But I was wrong. Language always allows space for imperfections. I realize that I have the freedom to be imperfect, to be incorrect.

When I started writing stories, I wasn't aware of the language I wrote in. Yet I believe that writers have always had a certain kind of relationship with the language they've written in for their entire life.

My earlier writings were mere reflections of whatever I was reading in those times. I had to build assertions to even call myself a writer. I realized that I was only touching the surface of it. There was so much more to swim in, experience and do with it. I'd never realized that things could change.

I threw everything I knew about English out of the window. When I heard it break, I went below and collected the fragments of it and began to put it all back together. There was something new. Fresh and exciting. Something more poetic, more educational. I realized that language has no shackles. One doesn't need an anchor to hold oneself up. One can stay, one can swim, or one can drown. But to survive, one has to learn.

I started by writing poetry at first. Eventually, years down, fiction is the pinnacle-most form of my daily life. I realize the importance of that journey. The transition, or perhaps, a metamorphosis from poetry to fiction. It didn't mean a direct change. It meant that I could do more with what I had.

You see, poetry is simply not just a form of literature. Poetry is a language. It's universal. It's the disruption in the flow of what is supposed to be, to make what it could be. And I surrender to it. We never are aware of the things that are possible because we bind ourselves to limitations. And those limitations become our expectations— and when things aren't as formulaic as our patterns, we question everything else. A new pattern. A new formula. A new theorem to prove.

Perhaps like the language of love isn't supposed to be romantic. Perhaps, it is supposed to be violent and broken.

Where does a word begin? Where does a word end? What is understanding? Language shifts our shared experiences. It molds our shared realities into a varied sense of belonging, and the way one describes something. A new linguistic tool is a unique perspective— a new description.

This is the type of language I seek under English, a language within another— to create a form of language that makes me feel whole and original, to form and describe my world, both, the one I grew up in and that I create fragmented. A dialect of the textual form. An accent. A new mode of being. And perhaps that is exactly why English seems like a chosen language. Because living in India makes one realize that one is surrounded by several languages. One constantly lives and breathes in several languages. And this is what makes English richer in texture– the mistakes and mispronunciations of words and phrases is what bends the language and makes it formative and imaginative. The beauty behind the madness, at the final hour, is creation.

Why do I write? Words. They lift me and inspire me. I write to facilitate myself with my deepest emotions. To read more intensely. And with no language, without English, I am nothing. I won't know how to feel, what, and when to feel. How does one translate what one feels without being mediated by a linguistic force?

Once while I was researching about language and linguistic purposes,, I came across this: "Every act of communication is an act of translation." by Gregory Rabassa.

Gregory Rabassa was a legendary translator of Portuguese and Spanish literature into English. I've never read or even heard about him. But this sentence hit me like a wrecking ball– a smack to my vulnerability.

It is true, I think, that every sense of communication translates a specific type of emotion, that perhaps no one else except for the origin itself can understand. Every translation, for me, is filtered. The more it is translated, it is changed. It is almost impossible to exceed the sentiment that the original can convey. It can come close but never be accurate.

In writing, language, conversing, or any other way of expressing myself, I am in translation.

The unfortunate part is that the translation, again, is never accurate. Hence, my writing stirs up quite a handful of misunderstandings. The language I use to write, English, is a translation of everything my mind haunts me about.

Emotions transform into words, words into expressions. It astonishes me, because every time I wrote or spoke before this, I believed that whatever I was trying to put into words is firsthand.

And in that sense, in translation, I am forever imperfect.