The language of dreams - growing up with Kamala

Abstract

"I don't know politics but I know the names Of those in power, and can repeat them like Days of week, or names of months, beginning with Nehru. I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar, I speak three languages, write in Two, dream in one. Don't write in English, they said, English is not your mother-tongue. Why not leave Me alone, friends, visiting cousins, Every one of you? Why not let me speak in Any language I like? The language I speak Becomes mine, its distortions, its queemesses All mine, mine alone. It is half English, half Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest, It is as human as I am human, don't You see? It voices my joys, my longings, my Hopes, and it is useful to me as cawing Is to crows or roaring to the lions, it Is human speech, the speech of the mind that is Here and not there. Not the deaf, blind speech Of trees in storm or of monsoon clouds or of rain or the Incoherent mutterings of the blazing Funeral pyre."