Home, in another language

I grew up in Hyderabad speaking Telugu at home, Hindi in the city and English at school. French came later, and more slowly. For most of my life I never thought of Telugu as something I carried. It was just the language the kitchen spoke in.

I only noticed it once I’d left. Singapore, then Sydney, then London: each move added a city and took away a little of the sound of home. You adapt quickly. You pick up the jokes, the shorthand, the places to eat. But some things you only ever say properly in your first language, and after a while you realise you’ve stopped saying them at all.

At LSE, once I started listening, Telugu was everywhere. In the library queue. On the phone in a corridor, someone switching languages mid-sentence because they thought no one around them would understand. Every time, I’d feel a small jolt of recognition, and then hesitate over whether to say anything.

So I started the LSE Telugu Society. My reason wasn’t very ambitious.

I wanted there to be a room where people did not have to translate themselves.

A student society can look like a small thing, and in one sense it is. But it’s useful in very ordinary ways. It’s where a second-year explains how the dissertation really works, where someone knows which landlord to avoid, where a friend notices you’ve gone quiet in the middle of a London winter. For students far from home, that kind of thing often decides whether a year abroad is something you get through or something you enjoy. And then there’s the food, which is how every Telugu gathering ends, planned or not.

I think about this in my work now more than I expected to. Institutions are built in a particular language, literally and otherwise. A scholarship form, an admissions process, a government scheme: each one assumes a certain reader. It serves best the people who already speak its language, and the people it misses are often just as capable, only further from the room.

I used to think belonging and ambition pulled in opposite directions. I don’t any more. It’s easier to go a long way when you know there’s somewhere, even a small room for an hour, where you don’t have to explain yourself.

K.