Inherited Language

This year, I had the opportunity to visit my maternal family’s ancestral home in a rural part of Udupi in India. The environment was unlike anything I had ever encountered before. The weather was hot and muggy, and a simple dirt path connected just three or four houses standing in front of a vast sea of grassland that was completely untouched by human hands. What struck me the most, however, was the way the place felt so unfamiliar to me despite its connection to my family.

The fact that I could not even understand the language spoken there, which is called Tulu, made this feeling even more apparent. I grew hearing Hindi, which is a very musical language, whereas Tulu sounded much rougher to my ears. Although I can understand Hindi to a certain level, Tulu has always been a complete mystery to me because I was never really exposed to it when I was younger. This meant I could only recognize how the sounds of the language were a part of my heritage without being able to participate in its preservation.

This experience changed how I view language in relation to my identity. It carries far more weight than just communication; language is the basis of culture that creates a shared sense of belonging in people, and I only realized this once I felt its absence. Hearing Tulu spoken in a place tied to my ancestry made me aware of the part of my heritage that remains unknown, and it made the divide between my culture and my sense of self more apparent.

A View Near my Family Home:


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