Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Hindustani

Wherever Sara Suleri writes Urdu, substitute Hindustani (rather than 'Hindi')… and she could be writing about all of us who claim Hindi as our mother tongue, but think/dream/write in English…

Speaking two languages may seem a relative affluence, but more often it entails the problems of maintaining a second establishment even though your body can be in only one place at a time. When I return to Urdu I feel shocked at my own neglect of a place so intimate to me: like relearning the proportions of a once familiar room, it takes me by surprise to recollect that I need not feel grief, I can eat grief; that I need not bury my mother but instead can offer her into the earth, for I am in Urdu now…
Listed on BlogShares