RHEA CHATTERJEA

BANGLA LANGUAGE AND LITERARY SOCIETY

SINGAPORE
CLASS A 4TH PRIZE IN THE 2006 COMMONWEALTH ESSAY COMPETITION

DOES ENGLISH ALLOW YOU TO BE FULLY YOURSELF OR DO YOU ALSO NEED

ANOTHER LANGUAGE?

English and Bengali, together they make me truly me…

“Dibe aar nibe, milabe, milibe

Jabena phire…”

“Give and take, mingle and be mingled in

(And) none will depart empty handed…”

I stared hard at the translation and tongued the words, trying to feel its true meaning. They
were amongst the most-quoted words from the great Nobel Laureate Poet Rabindranath
Tagore. The line, being an excerpt from one of his many insightful and influential poems,
never failed to touch the heart and mind. When articulated in Bengali, it resounded with the
philosophy of universal brotherhood and enculturation. His simple words communicated
ideas and feelings with intense meaning. My attempts to translate his poem were futile.

Being a fully bilingual child, I am equally conversant in English and Bengali when it
comes to day-to-day matters. I voiced my first words in English as a little baby. My first
Bengali words were uttered almost in desperation while on a holiday in Delhi. Hearing my
parents speaking Hindi, a foreign tongue I had never heard before, I was compelled to speak
Bengali, the language of my forefathers, just to show off my yearning to express myself in a
language that was closer to my being an Indian by race. I only officially started to learn
Bengali when I was about to start my schooling.

In my everyday life, both English and Bengali play major roles. Both help to bridge
gaps, and bring meaning to ideas I want to communicate. But individually, they serve different
purposes altogether.

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 English is my staple language, like rice is to my food. I think in English as I curse the
alarm clock which starts my day; I speak in English with the bus driver, my friends, classmates,
teachers, the stallholders in the canteen; actually with everybody I meet throughout the day.

And I am thankful that my lessons are conducted in English, a language I can not only
speak, write, and read, think and understand, but also feel and breathe. Who knows what
chemistry or physics would have been like had it been taught in Bengali? I can’t even start to
envisage what ‘intermolecular electrostatic forces’ or the ‘kinetic particle theory’ would
sound like in Bengali. I don’t even know what ‘oxygen’ is in Bengali. Perhaps my mom knows.
I haven’t the slightest clue and I am not intent on finding out either. Whatever the term is, I
am sure it won’t sound terrestrial at all. I feel at peace with English when it comes to
practicality in schoolwork and life in general.

When watching TV at home, shows like Judging Amy, American Idol, Crime Scene
Investigation and Becker top my list.

My MP3 player weaves mainly English songs, songs from bands like Green Day, BBMak,
Madonna and a whole list of other artists. I’ve picked out a few German songs along the way.
Increasingly, the richness in the tunes and rhythms of Hindi songs seem to fuel a fire within
me too.

But when it comes to true meaning, weaved and intertwined with heart-tingling tunes,
I seem to hold Bengali songs closer to my heart. When we race back and forth within the
small island city in our car, the Bengali songs are always playing in the car audio system. Since
young, my ears have always been attuned to Bengali songs. Their tunes strike a chord within
me that very few other tunes can. Now, they are engraved in my perceptions of music.

Time to time, when the meaning the Bengali songs convey doesn’t seem to crystallize
before me, my mother explains it. And invariably it unravels a meaning way beyond the

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obvious combination of words and tunes. Its essence flows in sync with nature or exhumes
meanings profound in philosophy.

At home, conversations with my parents, elder brother and my sister-in-law are

mostly in Bengali. Though more often than not, when the right word doesn’t seem to come
to mind, sentences get peppered with English. The incursion seems logical though, for all my
family members go through the same English-speaking environment all their waking hours as
well.

It appears that the key to life is English and that with English all doors would spring
open at will. Life is easy with English. Had I not known English, the world would have been a
different place for me indeed. It would not have provided me with the doors to open.

I smiled though I fumbled to translate Tagore’s poem in English, relieved that the
language that I am conversant in is universal, and would take me almost as far as I would want
to go. But the voice within told me a different story.

Living 2870 kilometres away from the land of my forefathers, I am privileged to be

able to learn Bengali, in a country I now call my own. Back in 1982, when my parents
migrated to Singapore, the emphasis on the mother tongue only resided in Mandarin, Malay
and Tamil, the three of the four official languages in Singapore, apart from English. Being
unable to fit into any of these categories, my elder brother was forced to learn Malay as his
second language. When this seemed too much to adjust to, my brother opted for German, an
even more remote language perhaps. But in time to come, German gave him an edge when he
went to Switzerland for his studies. It was a very pragmatic decision, I suppose, definitely not
by choice, but more because of a lack of one.

I wonder whether German gives him a sense of belonging to the language and culture
like Bengali gives me, but I doubt it. I learn German too, thanks to the Singapore education
system where one can choose to take up so many languages if one really wants to.

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English, Malay, German; my brother even dabbled with a bit of French in the university during
his undergraduate years and some Dutch while doing his PhD in the Netherlands. It is truly
amazing, how he knows so many languages. “A true cosmopolitan,” I mused.

But alas! When it comes to Bengali, he can only converse in ‘Benglish’, Bengali
speckled with English words. He never had the opportunity to explore Bengali at a greater
depth, to feel its charm and character. We’d tried to teach him to read individual Bengali
characters, but by the time he got to the end of a sentence, he’d forget what the last few
words had been! I suppose, the idea of allowing the minority languages to be offered as
mother tongue languages came to reality in Singapore too late for him to take advantage.

The song ‘Jharo jharo barishe baridhara’ does not bring in the sound of incessant rain,
pouring down on all sides, as it does for me. Gazing at the dark pregnant monsoon clouds,
sliced into pieces by the violent lash of the lightning, my brother will never be able to
spontaneously break into the Tagore song: ‘Chanchala Chapala chamake’ (the restless
lightning flashes with a startle). The deep unsettling rumble of the monsoon clouds which I
can almost hear in Tagore’s songs about the rainy season does not reverberate thoughts in
his mind like it does in mine. It’s not because he never listens to these songs; he always does.
But the meaning of the lyrics can never penetrate him in Bengali. The moment they are
translated to English, they lose their identity. More importantly perhaps, the songs remain as
mere songs to him. There is no instrument to translate these words into realisation for him,
like the strum of strings translates into music. Without the knowledge or feel of Bengali, the
impregnated lyrics fail to convey their heavily imbued meanings to him or dazzle him with
myriads of colourful images on the canvas of his mind. Without really feeling the essence of
the language, he is in a way, held back from being himself, from feeling like a true Bengali.

Born into the world fourteen years after my brother, many things have changed,
fortunately for the better. The new generations in Singapore never had cropped wings. They
were allowed to soar to their maximum capabilities, and challenge themselves to reach
heights never before achieved. English, German, French, Mandarin, Malay, Tamil, Japanese – I
could do it all if I wanted to. But more importantly, I was not only allowed to, but was

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encouraged to find out and experience who I really was, whom I was really consanguineous
to, through learning my own mother tongue. In short, I was given the opportunity to feel
what it meant to be a true Bengali.

In addition to the opportunities of self-realization offered by the language options in

Singapore, the Bengali Association in Singapore plays a major role in helping me truly realise
who I am. Through regular functions to celebrate typical Bengali festivals, I am able to get first
hand experience about the culture. Every Bengali child gets to find out what Bengali dances,
dramas, songs and recitations are all about.

Being fluent in Bengali, in spite of living across the Indian Ocean, I can fully tune myself
to the notes and rhythms of the culture when we make our annual trips back to Kolkata in
India. The sounds, the colours, the dresses, the sweet-ridden customs, the slower pace of life
and even the bony fish dished that bring out a true Bengali’s skill are not out of sync for me.
Every trip to India is another rich adventure of experiences that I always look forward to. I
feel the closeness to my relatives and the passion for the culture through the most vibrant
vehicle of the culture, the Bengali language itself.

“Bah, tumi Bangla porte jano?” (Oh! So you can read Bengali?) my relatives would exclaim in
wonder.
“Hae, aami schoole Bangla pori,” (Yes, I learn Bengali in school.) I would reply proudly.

And my relatives would gleam in just as much pride, knowing that I am a part of them, a part
of the culture. They know that in spite of living very far from the country, I still hold close to
my roots. I truly belong to the Bengali community, not just through official recognition, but
through the feelings, the understanding, the realisation and awareness of my Bengali
existence.

It is the knowledge of English that brings me closer to my intellectual, pragmatic,

practical and everyday aspirations. It allows me to understand the world that revolves around

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me. English enables me to become competent, compatible and competitive and thus
successful in a measurable way.

But it is Bengali that tells me who I am, and enables me to truly mingle with those from the
same Bengali culture, where I belong.

“…Dibe aar nibe, milabe, milibe

Jabena phire…”

I would give and take and be true to myself. I would mingle with others and be mingled in. I
would take what others offered and offer what I have. And in the end, I would not return
empty-handed. English and Bengali – without either one of them, I would never be truly me.