Ira Glass

Act One, How Do I Say This? So we begin today with somebody returning to their family in the suburbs out in the far west in Canada, in Calgary, Alberta. And she is returning with a mission, something she needed to discuss in English, though the thing she wanted to discuss was a different language entirely. The person doing this is Scaachi Koul.

Scaachi Koul

Nine months ago, after 28 years of being alive, I finally started taking Hindi classes. My parents are both from India, and they emigrated to Canada long before I was born. They speak a number of languages, including Hindi, and their mother tongue, Kashmiri. But there's no real textbook or organized class or Duolingo program for Kashmiri. Hindi proved to be the easiest one for me to learn.

I'm not enjoying these lessons. I've said aloud in class several times that I hate it. I hate it because it's hard, harder than I expected. Because for some reason, I thought this language would come naturally. And yet, for two hours every week, I meet my teacher and fellow classmate at a coffee shop in midtown Manhattan and learn how to greet someone, and tell them what I am presently eating, and that the cat is sitting in the big chair. Sometimes the cat is sitting on the little chair. Learning to say that has cost me $1,150 thus far.

I started these lessons on a whim. I knew for years that I wanted to do it, but I didn't give much thought as to why. I assumed my parents would be happy about it. Not even just happy-- elated. My dad has said to me more than once, you're barely recognizable. When he says it, he means I'm not recognizable to him as the person he wanted me to be, the person who would never, for example, have married a white man much older than she is, or refused a career in medicine, or smoked at least 800 cigarettes.

But I don't know if my learning Hindi even matters to my parents, or how much. I also don't know why they never made me learn it in the first place. So I went home to find out.

Dad

Hey, Google. Play something by Girija Devi.

Google Assistant

Here's a Spotify station featuring [INAUDIBLE] Devi.

Scaachi Koul

When I visit my parents, we don't usually do much more than sit together in the living room and alternate between joking and fighting. We're all indoor cats.

Scaachi Koul

I recently got them a Google Home, foolishly thinking they'd delight in being able to boss it around. They've had it for a day and have been characteristically hostile to it.

Dad

Hey, Google. No, that's wrong.

Google Assistant

Sorry, I might be a little buggy.

Scaachi Koul

She didn't say she was buzzy. She said she was buggy.

Scaachi Koul

Like, she has a bug.

Mom

This thing is a racist because I keep telling play bhajan, and it doesn't play bhajan.

Scaachi Koul

When the Google Home fails to play the devotional song my mom requests, she curses at it. And I finally recognize one of the few Kashmiri words I know from my childhood.

Scaachi Koul

[KASHMIRI], as my mom said, is her saying that she hopes lightning hits the Google Home. The insults my parents use are the part of their language I absolutely know. I can help you call someone lazy, dumb, loud, annoying, rude, ugly. But the one I know best is [KASHMIRI]. You say it when you're mad or shocked or when someone's cooking is so excellent, you just can't help but want them to get hit by lightning. My dad eventually gives up on trying to teach the Google Home Kashmiri and settles on something she knows.

Dad

Hey, Google. Play Frank Sinatra. You have to say please to her?

Scaachi Koul

No, she's a robot. I mean, it's nice, but it's not necessary.

[MUSIC - "COME FLY WITH ME" BY FRANK SINATRA]

Dad

That's my main man, isn't he? I should have a cigarette and a whiskey in one hand and a smoking jacket.

Scaachi Koul

It's 10:00 in the morning.

Dad

Who cares? It's 10:00 PM somewhere.

Scaachi Koul

Later that night, my mom hosts a party for my brother's 40th birthday. And she's cooked her usual dinner party spread-- the mallu, rogan josh, bhatta, haakh dripping in oil.

Scaachi Koul

Happy birthday.

Scaachi Koul

I have all these questions for my parents. But first, I want to talk to my brother, the only other person in the world who understands what I'm getting myself into. I call my brother [NON-ENGLISH], meaning older brother. He's 12 years older than me and was born in India. Kashmiri is his first language, and though he understands it when it's spoken to him, he lost the ability to speak it himself soon after he moved to Canada as a toddler. He doesn't remember anyone trying to get him to speak Kashmiri instead of English.

Brother

But nobody said anything to me, or maybe they did, and I just said, I just want to watch Three's Company. Thank you very much.

Scaachi Koul

That is how my brother learned English-- reruns of Three's Company. Consequently, he has a very complex understanding of tenant protection rights. My brother affirms one thing I remember to be true when we were kids. It was deeply uncool to speak Hindi or Kashmiri. We knew lots of Indian kids who spoke their parents' language. They were dutiful, good, polite, always saying, yes, Auntie [INAUDIBLE]. But we also knew that those kids were fucking dorks and worthy of our ire. We were never dutiful.

Back then, I envied my brother. He's fair-skinned with angular features and a phonetic name. He could always hide in plain sight. I used to wish I could do the same.

My brother is married. He lives 20 minutes away from my parents. And he has a nine-year-old daughter that I call Raisin. She is the best person in the world. Raisin is biracial. Her mother is white, and she's light skinned with bright blue eyes. She doesn't speak Hindi or Kashmiri, with the exception of naming her favorite foods. And even though my brother could do something about her slim language skills, he hasn't.

Scaachi Koul

Why haven't you put her in those classes?

Brother

She doesn't want to do it.

Scaachi Koul

Yeah, but she's nine. She doesn't want to do anything. I don't think she wants to wash her butt. Like--

Brother

But I don't want to-- I also don't-- I'm super lazy. So if it's like the reality is driving to the [INAUDIBLE] at 8:30 on a Sunday, that's not going to happen. I can barely get her to go to karate, something she is interested in.

Scaachi Koul

As for my brother, he's not likely to sign up for a class himself, despite having the urge, just like I do.

Brother

Do I think about practicing? Yeah, all the time. But I just don't.

Scaachi Koul

(LAUGHING) Why not?

Brother

I don't because our parents are merciless when you try to learn something new, and I'm not interested in giving them more fodder for jokes.

Scaachi Koul

What do you mean that they're merciless about--

Brother

Have you ever tried to speak a language that they know in front of them?

Brother

Yeah, how'd that go?

Scaachi Koul

I'd say it's a spicy experience.

Brother

That doesn't mean anything to me, but OK.

Scaachi Koul

Do you think that we turned out the way he wanted, that he'd-- like when he--

Brother

No. No, I don't think we did, at all.

Scaachi Koul

If we didn't turn out the way our dad wanted us to, well, my dad bears a lot of responsibility for that. For one thing, instead of forcing us to learn Hindi, he made us learn French.

Scaachi Koul

Why instead of making me take Hindi classes at the temple, did you decide, oh, I know, I'm going to put them in French immersion for some reason?

Dad

Because Canada is a bilingual country. And I was hoping that the Hindi would come automatically because at home and other Indians.

Scaachi Koul

My dad is loquacious and wry and thinks he's the smartest person in the room. He's also stubborn as hell, and so am I, which means we're often trying to murder each other. After I first got together with the man who would become my husband, the way older white guy, my dad didn't talk to me for a year. When I first asked him how he feels about me taking these classes, he's his typical self-- dismissive and glib.

Scaachi Koul

What did you think when I started taking the Hindi classes?

Dad

I was amused. Since you do whatever you want to do, I thought maybe, OK, good.

Scaachi Koul

What does that mean, I do whatever I want to do?

Dad

Because you are a very independent-minded person. You do not take any instruction or anything. So I was glad that at least you are doing something for your betterment. Because, like I said, having knowledge of another language can never hurt you.

Scaachi Koul

Don't be fooled by his detached attitude about whether I speak Hindi. He has other feelings as well, depending on the day. He used to get upset about it. When I was younger, sometimes he would speak to me in Kashmiri and quickly get frustrated that I could barely understand it and couldn't respond. He gave that up after I moved out.

But ever since I started my Hindi classes, he's trying again. Now when I call my mother, he'll barge into our calls and demand that she speak to me in Hindi and Kashmiri. I had to ask him the same question over and over again before he finally admits that, yes, he's absolutely thrilled at the idea of me learning Hindi.

Dad

And hopefully, one day, you will converse with somebody in Hindi. And you should go to India. I'll go with you, but let you lead so that you can speak with taxi drivers or auto rickshaw drivers or shopkeepers, and try to haggle with them in Hindi. I bet you it'll be hilarious. It'll be wonderful.

Scaachi Koul

Were you surprised that I started taking lessons?

Dad

Yeah, I was. Because you were-- both you kids were extremely whitewashed. Maybe I had something to do with it. I didn't purposely do that.

Scaachi Koul

Exactly what my dad had to do with that goes all the way back to his arrival in Canada. This is who my dad was when me and my brother were kids-- 125 pounds, 5 foot 4, ambitious, and working hard as a pharmaceutical representative. It was all so we would eventually have all you could ever want-- house, two cars, a yard, university educations. We were middle class in Canada, all with traditional Hindu names. It was the Indian dream.

We didn't have much family near us in Calgary. I didn't go to school with any other brown kids until I was well into high school. My brother and cousin spoke to each other and me in English. My father had this idea that we'd pick up Hindi at home, but that's ridiculous. My parents spoke Kashmiri and English. Hindi was reserved for Bollywood movies and when my mom needed to speak to her jeweler. What form of osmosis is my dad even talking about?

Dad

I thought that this language, mother tongue specifically, would come a little later on. And I should concentrate on you being totally assimilated with the Canadian culture, if you will, whatever that culture is. But somehow I should have created some sort of infrastructure where you would be-- you would learn and be at least proficient in one of the languages-- Indian languages, that is.

Scaachi Koul

Well, why didn't you make me take lessons for either Hindi or Kashmiri?

Dad

I don't know. I don't know why. I ought to have done it.

Scaachi Koul

I don't think my dad is equipped to directly talk about how hard it was to leave India. My mom can talk about her sadness easily, as if all those feelings are still right at the surface of her skin, waiting to bleed out of her and drown me.

Mom

I had to say goodbye to my dad and my mother. That was very hard. That was really, really hard.

Scaachi Koul

My dad was the family's sole breadwinner, and in her early days in Canada, my mother was alone a lot with my brother, just a toddler. She noticed he was losing his Kashmiri three or four months after they arrived.

Mom

And I would talk to him in Kashmiri, and he would answer me in English. And I said, OK, this is it. He's not going to say anything back now. And I would push him and say it in Kashmiri, and he would say it in English. He would not say in Kashmiri.

Scaachi Koul

So then why didn't you push him to keep it up?

Mom

Well, how can you make him do-- push-- how can you make him to speak?

Scaachi Koul

When bhai got a little older, my mother and father considered signing him up for Hindi classes. And it turns out their reason for not doing so is the exact same practical, yet lazy one my big brother gives about Raisin.

Mom

Papa said Sunday morning, I don't want to get up at 10 o'clock and take him to Hindi school. That was only because Hindi schools, that's what the timing. Sunday's the only day when I had my day off. And I was not that confident driving that time on the Deerfoot in wintertime. So that's all. Fell apart.

Scaachi Koul

My mother says that years later, they actually put me in Hindi classes. I was maybe five then. She says that I'd wander out of class, which was held in the basement of our [INAUDIBLE], and would trot up the stairs to find her. I don't remember this at all. They stopped trying to force it. At the time, I'm sure I was thrilled that they left it alone.

I pushed against brownness in every way I could. I recoiled when my white friends would call and overhear my parents speaking Kashmiri in the background. I didn't want to invite them over because they could smell sandalwood in the curtains. I resented my unpronounceable first name and passively let people call me Sasha or Sara or Scratchy or Sushi or whatever examples of genteel racism were permeating my life.

Scaachi Koul

Are you disappointed that I can't speak Kashmiri and I can't speak Hindi?

Mom

I wouldn't say disappointed. But I feel sad that it would have been nice. Because sometimes if I want to tell you something, and I have to change the language, it loses its-- what I want to tell you. So that time, I'm really frustrated. I say I wish she could understand what I'm trying to tell her.

Scaachi Koul

Sometimes I could see my mom struggling to find the right word to convey the right feeling. Has she always felt a gap between what she wanted to tell me and what I was able to grasp? When I moved away for university, I worried my mom would be lonely. I resented that I worried about her. But I wondered who my mom would talk to when I left home. I never considered that maybe the language we were speaking left her feeling lonely, before I even moved away.

Scaachi Koul

Did you want me and bhai to assimilate in Canada?

Scaachi Koul

Did we assimilate too much?

Mom

Well, I will say yes and no to that. It would have been nice if a little bit stayed towards your heritage, towards your culture. But I guess it was supposed to happen, and there's nothing I can do about it.

Scaachi Koul

This idea from both of my parents makes me nuts. Of course there's something she could have done about it. I know that my parents made the best choices they had at the time. Now, though, I feel like I missed out on something that I desperately want.

Scaachi Koul

I wish I could have spoken to your mom when she was alive.

Mom

Yeah, well, I wish that you--

Scaachi Koul

I mean, did that-- did she say anything to you about that, that she couldn't speak to her grandchildren?

Mom

Yeah, she used to cry and cry and cry. She says, I cannot speak to them, and they don't understand me. And I wish I could talk to them. So it was hard. It was a shame that you guys couldn't talk to her. She would have been overwhelmed if you would say just a few words. Now it is all gone, so it doesn't matter now. Anything else?

Scaachi Koul

Of course there's something else. There's always something else.

Scaachi Koul

What are we making first?

Mom

You said you wanted to see how we cook green beans, right?

Cooking is the only place where I don't know the English equivalency of most words, evidenced by how many times I go to the grocery store and ask for [NON-ENGLISH] or [NON-ENGLISH] and struggle to name it in English. In the kitchen, my pronunciation is flawless. And for once, I don't feel like a fraud when I speak in Hindi or Kashmiri.

When I was a kid, I wouldn't even let my mom pack me Indian food for lunch. No one wants to be different in a grade school cafeteria. Then I moved away for university, and I realized all I wanted was my mom's cooking. I wanted her to braid my hair and rub my back and wax my mustache off for me, all these blips of intimacy with her I once had. I've been learning how to make her food ever since.

Scaachi Koul

My beans always turn out weird.

Scaachi Koul

I don't know. They get too salty.

Mom

Maybe you are putting too much salt. Simple.

Scaachi Koul

Yeah, Mom, I know. God. How is that helpful?

My Hindi, after a few months of lessons, is finally good enough that I can have slivers of conversations with my parents. Recently, they visited me in New York. And on a walk with my husband barely two feet ahead of us, my mother told me in Hindi, your husband has no butt.

One day, my parents will die. And when that happens, we'll all forget the insults and the sounds and the way my mom rolls her Rs. I can't even imagine how lonely I'll be without her sounds. Maybe it'll hurt less if I learn how to make these sounds on my own. For now, I'm still stumbling over how to say "I love you" to my mother in her mother tongue.

[SPEAKING KASHMIRI]

Scaachi Koul

My mom now tells me constantly how proud she is that I'm trying to learn Hindi. More than anything, that's what keeps me going to class.

Ira Glass

Scaachi Koul, she writes about culture for BuzzFeed News, and she's also the author of a collection of essays, One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter.

[MUSIC - "DON'T LET ME BE MISUNDERSTOOD" BY NINA SIMONE]

Coming up, they didn't mean it. They really didn't mean it. They really, really didn't mean it. Right? That's what they say. Mother and daughter, and the song they chose to sing at a very significant family event. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.