Personal Essay: ‘Language is meant to bring us closer. To help us say: I see you. I want to understand you. I care enough to learn your words. And when we turn language into a line in the sand and use it to exclude, to shame, to assert dominance, we forget its most sacred purpose: to connect.’

- Namrata

Many years ago, the poet and lyricist Gulzar said, “Bhasha ek zariya hai, jazbaat zaroori hain.” Language is just a medium, emotions are what truly matter. His words stayed with me, as a reminder that, even without perfect grammar or accent in language, what reaches people is its feeling—a truth I have carried through years of conversations, friendships, and cities.

Lately, however, I have found myself wondering if we are in danger of forgetting this truth. I have found myself thinking about language in a way I never used to. Not just as something we speak but as something that’s slowly being used to divide, to draw lines, to decide who belongs and who doesn’t. I have seen people shamed for not knowing a language. I have heard the mockery and have watched how easily something as intimate and personal as language becomes a measure of pride or proof. And each time, I have felt a quiet ache. Because my relationship with language has never been about correctness. It has been about connection.

I have lived across twelve cities in four states. I speak seven languages, can read and write in five. But even that doesn’t capture what language has truly been to me. It has been a doorway. A way of being let in and of letting others in. I choose to remember the many ways language has shown up in my life, not as a barrier, but as a thread of understanding, of care, of love.

Language has always been more than just a tool for me. More than alphabets strung together or grammar learned in school. It has been a presence, sometimes quiet, and sometimes loud. This presence has shaped my friendships, my work, my travels, and my sense of belonging. I don’t remember when I first noticed how language works in people’s lives, not just in what they say, but in what they feel when they say it. But I do know that once you begin to see language as emotion, as gesture, or as an act of love, you never quite unsee it.

In recent times, I have watched with unease as language has become a fault line in our country. A space of tension, of conflict, of gatekeeping.

But it hasn’t always felt this way. Something has shifted in the air. In cities like Bengaluru and Mumbai, I have watched as shopfronts are vandalized, tempers flare, and strangers are confronted simply for not speaking the “right” language. Politicians and local groups have discovered that language can be turned into a rallying cry, a way to mark who belongs and who doesn’t. Social media magnifies every slight, turning a single exchange into a symbol of cultural pride or betrayal. What was once a quiet undercurrent of local identity now swells into open hostility, fuelled by nativist pride and the fear of being erased. The cost is not just bruised egos, but bruised bodies, and the slow eroding of the trust that once made strangers feel like neighbours.

And in response, I found myself looking inward, returning to memories, small moments, and the many quiet ways in which language has shaped my life. Not through force. But through grace. Through shared snacks, old songs, hand signs, awkward accents, and open hearts.

The Language of Love

One of my earliest memories of language and love intertwining goes back to a distant uncle’s wedding. It was the early ’90s, a time when love marriages were still spoken of in hushed tones in most Indian households. I was very young, and most of the drama or tension around their union floated above my understanding.

Something has shifted in the air. I have watched as shopfronts are vandalized, tempers flare, and strangers are confronted simply for not speaking the “right” language. Politicians and local groups have discovered that language can be turned into a rallying cry, a way to mark who belongs and who doesn’t.

But there’s one thing that stayed with me, vivid and bright like a pressed flower in an old diary. When the couple decided to get married—after proposing to each other with all the awkward, hopeful courage that love requires—they each gave the other an unusual gift: A book that said, 30 days to learn one another’s language. My uncle spoke Telugu. My aunt, Tamil.

They didn’t do it because they couldn't communicate otherwise, they already shared enough words to laugh, argue, dream together. They did it for their families. “If we were to sit together as a family,” my uncle once told me much later, “I would not want her to feel left out just because she doesn’t understand the conversation. She is a part of the family. And she should feel like one.”

So, they taught each other. Learnt together. Fumbled, joked, corrected, listened. Not to pass some test, not for fluency, but to build a bridge, one that their families could walk across. Today, they live in the U.S., but their children can speak to both sets of grandparents in their respective languages. A thread of love stitched through generations; through vowels and verbs and the effort it takes to make someone else’s world your own.

Language, at its purest, is an offering. And we’ve all made that offering at some point—humming a loved one’s favourite song even when we didn’t know all the words, reading subtitles to watch their favourite film, repeating a meme in a language we barely grasped just to make them smile.

When did language stop being an act of love and start becoming a burden?

When did it become an obstruction instead of an embrace?

It still can be love. It has been, for so many of us. And maybe, that's where we need to begin remembering.

When Words Were Not the Only Language

In the early 2010s, I moved to a quiet, tucked-away corner on the outskirts of Mumbai. It wasn’t the Mumbai of postcards or news channels, no skyline of high-rises, or the frantic rush of local trains. It was slower, softer. A place where the concrete gave way to dust-lined roads, vegetable carts, and the comforting aroma of something always cooking somewhere.

I knew only broken Marathi back then, fragments picked up from friends and their families over the years. Just enough to string together a sentence, ask a price, say thank you, and smile my way through the rest. My work was mostly from home, which gave me a kind of quiet anonymity, but I had to step out often enough for groceries, fresh flowers, the daily essentials.

I quickly realised it didn’t matter that I wasn’t fluent. No one made it feel like it did.

There was a sort of unspoken grace in how people accepted me, warm, open-hearted. We found our way around words. Sign language, laughter, a certain musicality in tone. We understood each other not because we shared a language, but because we shared intention: Humanity. Vendors would go out of their way, slipping in an extra fruit into my bag, offering a few more marigolds than I’d paid for, a gentle string of jasmine tucked in like a smile. It was never transactional. It was care. And I, in return, would often bring them a hot vada pav from the street corner, a local delicacy that always tasted best when shared. We would stand together, laughing at the messiness of it all, wiping our fingers on scraps of paper, speaking half-words, whole feelings.

There was something sacred in those exchanges. They grounded me in a city that can often feel relentless. Mumbai, as I have come to know it, is a city of immigrants, built and rebuilt every day by people who arrive here with dreams, struggles, and stubborn hope. And perhaps because so many know what it feels like to be new, to not belong yet, they meet you with more than just language. They meet you with kindness.

Not once did anyone tell me I should know Marathi. It was never a gate I had to unlock to be let in. And perhaps that is why the recent hostility feels so jarring, because I have lived the proof that belonging doesn’t demand fluency, only goodwill.

A Movie, a Town, a Language

In 2016, a Marathi film called Sairat swept through our small town like a storm. You could feel it in the air, the way you can feel the first drop of rain before it hits the ground. Suddenly, everything had changed. Girls were zipping down narrow lanes on bikes, mirroring Archi, the fearless female lead. The raw, tender, and fierce songs played at every street corner. Banners of the film kept growing larger, louder, prouder.

There was something electric happening. And I knew I had to be a part of it. Armed with little more than curiosity and a patchwork understanding of Marathi, I bought myself a ticket to the only single-screen theatre in the area. The film had no subtitles. Just a full house and a story that had gripped the hearts of everyone around me.

It was hard for me to follow. The dialogues ran fast, and much of the conversation escaped me. But I returned to watch it again. Twice more. Each time peeling back a new layer, grasping something deeper. And with every viewing, I found myself not just understanding the story but feeling it.

Because how could you not? Two young lovers, torn apart by caste. Their rebellion, their joy, and their devastation playing out on screen and echoed in the audience around me. People clapped, whistled, cried openly. They hummed along to the songs, reached out to wipe a tear. I remember sitting in that theatre, surrounded by strangers who were laughing and weeping together, and thinking: This is it. This is why language doesn’t always need to be translated. Because emotion already is.

The film didn’t just tell a story. It became part of the town’s story. And mine. I was reminded again of how this city, this Mumbai of immigrants, memories, and mingled tongues, welcomes you not by demanding you speak a certain language, but by making space for you to feel in it.

Language wasn’t a wall that day. It was a passageway. And Sairat, that storm of a movie, taught me once again that stories, when told from the heart, always find their way home.

There was a sort of unspoken grace in how people accepted me, warm, open-hearted. We found our way around words. Sign language, laughter, a certain musicality in tone. We understood each other not because we shared a language, but because we shared intention: Humanity.

A Map Made of Words

I still hope to learn more languages. Not for degrees. Not for fluency tests. But for the quiet joy of travelling through languages like a curious visitor walking barefoot into someone else’s world. Every new language I have learnt has been a doorway. And behind each door, a friend, a song, a story, a shared meal, a celebration. A version of life slightly different from mine, but still deeply familiar.

A Bangla friend once introduced me to the world of Bengali movies and songs, their soft lilt, the aching poetry, the rainy evenings soaked in Rabindra Sangeet. A Punjabi colleague played me Punjabi folk songs during a late night at work and suddenly, I was swept into a world of rhythm, dhol, love, and longing.

I learnt Gujarati while studying in Gujarat, slowly piecing together the language of the streets, the shaak, and the laughter. And in doing so, I discovered how much we shared, customs, quirks, proverbs that felt like cousins of the ones I had grown up with.

Tamil came through Carnatic music and Bharatanatyam. Each keerthanai was a lesson in both language and feeling. And Malayalam came to me not through textbooks or tutors, but through the quiet admiration of the actor Dulquer Salmaan. Love—even the cinematic kind—has strange, beautiful ways of teaching.

Every language I have picked up has come from affection. From presence. From being there with people, art, culture. From wanting to understand, not just the words, but the world inside them.

The Many Tongues Within a Tongue

One of the things I have come to cherish about living across cities is how even a single language can hold multitudes. Take Marathi, for instance. The Marathi spoken in Mumbai is a different rhythm altogether from the one spoken in Pune. Softer in some places, quicker in others. The vocabulary shifts, the tone shifts, sometimes even the way a question is asked changes.

In Mumbai, someone might say “Kuthay chalalay?” for “Where are you going?”, while in Pune you are more likely to hear “Kuthe chalat ahes?” — a slightly more formal phrasing. A glass of buttermilk in Mumbai is simply taak, while in Pune you might be offered mattha. Even the intonation changes: Mumbai’s speech often has a rise-and-fall shaped by the city’s mix of tongues, while Pune’s Marathi carries a measured clarity. You can almost hear the geography in it, the sea in one, the hills in another.

Gujarati, too, comes dressed in many colours. There is the sharp clarity of Amdavadi Gujarati, the lyrical bend of Surti, the earthy musicality of Kathiawadi, and the distinctive warmth of Kachhi. Each dialect is a story. Of region, of history, of people. They are not mistakes. They are identity. Even within Tamil or Hindi, there are so many inflections, dialects, and slangs. Each shaped by who’s speaking it, and where they are standing when they do.

If we looked closely, we would see how we have all picked up languages from love, be it the lyrics of a song, the subtitles of a film, the inflections of a friend, or the cadence of a colleague’s speech.

And yet, when we talk about language today, we often talk about it as if it’s one thing. One form. One pronunciation. One correct way. But that’s never been true. Language has always shapeshifted to meet its speaker. It has always been a street performance and not a museum artifact.

What Language Can Be

All these memories, of a quiet town outside Mumbai, of fruit vendors and jasmine strings, of a movie watched three times just to feel its full weight, of songs shared between friends, of a love story between two people who gifted each other not roses but words have shaped how I see language. Not as a weapon. Not as a gate. Not as a burden. But as a thread. A bridge. A gift.

Sometimes now, when I see arguments erupt over someone speaking the wrong language, I wonder what we are really fighting for. Pride? Power? Fear of erasure? I think of the times when language was a doorway held open for me, and I realize those are not small sentimental moments They are the very opposite of the narrowing, angry narrative that is taking hold now. I have never seen language that way. And I don’t want to start doing so.

I want to remember the jasmine-seller who smiled through my broken Marathi. The movie theatre full of strangers crying in sync. The couple who gave each other 30 days and a lifetime of understanding.

This is the India I know. This is the language I choose.

I have never understood the anger that erupts when someone doesn’t know your language. When did we forget that most of us carry more than one language inside us? A mother tongue, a city tongue, a borrowed one, a learned one, a secret one we only speak to ourselves. If we looked closely, we would see how we have all picked up languages from love, be it the lyrics of a song, the subtitles of a film, the inflections of a friend, or the cadence of a colleague’s speech.

Language is meant to bring us closer. To help us say: I see you. I want to understand you. I care enough to learn your words. And when we turn language into a line in the sand and use it to exclude, to shame, to assert dominance, we forget its most sacred purpose: to connect.

Because when language becomes a test of worthiness, it shrinks the space where we can meet each other as people. It takes something as alive and generous as a mother tongue and turns it into a border checkpoint. The loss is not abstract — it is in the friendships that never form, the art that never travels, the stories that never cross over. It is in the fear that replaces curiosity, and in the silence of those who decide it is safer not to speak at all

Across the country, I have picked up new words, new ways of speaking, of being. Some stayed with me, some faded. But each taught me that language, when shared with love, doesn’t just reflect identity, it expands it.

So, I will keep learning. I will keep fumbling through new words. I will keep sitting through movies without subtitles, letting meaning arrive in feeling rather than grammar. Because the moment I stop believing that language can be love, I lose something essential—not just in the world, but in myself.

***

Namrata is an author, editor, and book reviewer. She is a UEA alumnus and has studied travel writing at the University of Sydney. Her writings can be found on Kitaab, Asian Review of Books, Contemporary South Asia Journal of King’s College-London, Mad in Asia, The Friday Times, The Scroll, Feminism in India, The Brown Orient Journal, Inkspire Journal, Moonlight Journal, The Same, Chronic Pain India and Cafe Dissensus. Her short stories have been a part of various anthologies and she has also published two short story collections of her own. She is currently working on her debut novel. You can find her on Twitter @PrivyTrifles.

The Words Between Us