"He was right there next to me all the time. I just didn't see him that way. Now, he's my soul mate" she says holding his hands and looking straight into the camera.
"We started off as enemies, then became best friends. Now, we are lovers" another couple gushes on the "Humans of" instagram page.
I roll my eyes before switching channels or just scrolling down. Love stories bore me. But I am a hypocrite because I have my own. My very own sappy story. A love-hate relationship. An affair that I'm deeply embroiled in. One that I can't get over no matter how difficult it gets. I get thwarted and yet I crawl back every single time, with my tail between my legs. "I don't understand this unreasonable attachment" I've been told countless times. I don't either. I work harder at this than I've worked for any other relationship and I still am out of my depth. I am a lover spurned. I am a woman obsessed. I am a raging addict. Just for one - Tamil.
Yep. This is a story of my relationship with Tamil.
I was born in an exclusively all Tamil family. To parents who couldn't feel more differently about the language. My dad is passionate about the language. He grew up discussing literature over dinner. He writes poetry at the drop of a hat. I've spent many hours listening to argumentative debates between him and his siblings pitting one author against another or one song lyricist against another. My mom, on the other hand, still prefers to call herself a kannadiga. Born and raised in Bangalore, she shunned all tamil habits in favor of those of her kannada social circle. For comfort food, she turned to Ragi mudde and spinach sambhar, not thayir saadham and potato roast. To crush on, she picked Rajkumar, not Sivaji Ganesan. My dad wrote love poetry for my mom in Tamil before they got married, and she politely asked him to translate it into kannada because she didn't understand what he was trying to say. My dad's still trying to recover from that broken heart.
And when they brought me in to the mix, they decided that I would be educated in English, Hindi and French since I'd anyway pick up Tamil at home. So I grew up in a school where it was frowned upon to utter a single Tamil word. I was raised to be an English snob.
When I moved from Ooty to Coimbatore, I carried the snobbishness with me. I hated it because the city was 'sooo tamil'. I picked the 'most english' of schools only to discover, to my horror, that most of the teachers slipped easily into Tamil while teaching. I cringe now when I attempt to record it. I cringe at the ease with which I let myself be conditioned to think that English was somehow superior to Tamil. I surrounded myself with the only non-tamil speaking gang in school, a Mallu Marthomite best friend, a Telugu boyfriend who spoke only english. A class division masked under the name of language - I can say now.
But a few years later, sitting miles away, I realized the nostalgic power that tamil has over me. The wave of comfort certain tamil songs could give me solely based on the fact that I grew up listening to my dad sing the songs. From this discovery of tamil songs, I descended rapidly into the discovery of a language I spoke fluently, but never paid attention to. I started paying attention to the word play in my dad's poetry. I relished the emotions captured in kollywood songs. I'm struggling to experience the magic of tamil literature in it's original form. And now, I lust after Tamil. Chasing it down, stalking it endlessly.
Tamil is my language of comfort. When I'm at my lowest low, a "Vaa kettikko" goes miles further than a "Hug?". It is also my language of intimacy. When I utter a "Po da" with a glint in my eye and a barely contained smile on my lips, I might as well be saying "I love you". Is there even an English word for konjals? And for me to be myself and express myself in my most vulnerable state, I need my partner to know Tamil. I respond eagerly to endearments in Tamil. I blush brighter with a "azhagi" rather than a "hottie".
Sharanya Manivannan put it beautifully into words for me. "But he spoke to me mostly in Tamil, and I spoke to him mostly in English, and in bed the two merged: the latter for commands, jokes, smut. The former, always, for tenderness", she said in one of her short stories. Can't say it better.
Tamil is what happens to me when I let my guard down. Tamil is the language I cry in. Tamil is the language I think in. Tamil is the language I dream in. Catch me cooing to a new born and it'll be in Tamil. Hear me whispering abuses to myself when I'm pissed at someone, chances are it'll be in Tamil.