Posted 3:43 p.m. Friday, April 18, 2025
Conquering Telugu--Literacy Narrative
My 7-year-old self had just gotten off the plane. I was feeling like a polar bear in the arctic who had just woken up from its hibernation — groggy, slow and hungry. The feeling slowly wore off when I stepped into the airport and was hit by the bright summer sunlight shining through the skylights that covered the roof of the airport. My nose quickly caught on to the nutty roast-like aroma of freshly brewed coffee from the nearby cafes and fresh aromatic vapors of various colognes. I suddenly remembered where I was — I had just landed in India - my home country, and I was soon going to see my grandparents, my cousins and many more relatives I hadn’t met yet.
For a bit of context, I had been living in North Carolina since birth and I hadn’t been to India yet. I just flew to India with my parents to attend a wedding — my first Indian wedding. I had been told by my parents that it was going to be a grand colorful multi-day affair involving a multitude of cultural functions and events. I was excited yet nervous since I would be meeting a lot of new relatives and family members. The thought of trying to remember everyone's name and talking to these new faces was a daunting one for me.
I tried to push the nervous thoughts to the back of my mind while I got into the taxi which was going to drop me and my parents off at our house. I got cozy in the backseat and started gazing out the window like any other child. The view was a stark contrast to the suburban neighborhood of Winston-Salem, NC, that my eyes were used to. The streets were like a vibrant carnival, filled with street vendors and sweet shops with their lively calls and tempting treats, rickshaws dancing around like bumper cars, and bustling markets. It was evidently the wedding season in India. Even someone with no image or an idea of an Indian wedding in their minds would be able to tell that something was in the air. The magic was palpable. Among all this I felt foreign and felt like a visitor, as if the culture were not my own.
As we made it through the slow-moving traffic of downtown Hyderabad, my ears were filled with the noises of honking cars and the yells of impatient drivers which overpowered the chit-chat between my father who was riding shotgun and the taxi driver. My mom was showing me pictures and going over all the names of the family members that I would be meeting, and how they were related to me while I was making desperate efforts to memorize as much as possible. After what seemed like an eternity from being stuck in traffic, we were finally pulling up at the driveway of our house.
It was a large villa decorated in LED lights, somewhat similar to American houses decorated in long Christmas lights. The floors were covered in colorful art patterns, the aroma of various spices and sweets filled the air, the vicinity of the house sprinkled with cars and wedding planners and decorators hurriedly pacing around the house making efforts to get all the decorations in order.
We got out of the taxi, and I held on to my mother’s hand as we made our way towards the gates. My grandmother was indulging in stern conversation with a helper when she noticed us walking towards the house. She abruptly resigned from her talk and came towards us. She tightly hugged my mom and my dad and exchanged greetings before turning her attention towards me. I still remember her wide smile, her wrinkles around the eyes and her warm embrace. I hugged her and said, “Hi grandma”, which she replied to in Telugu — my mother tongue. I shyly smiled and cowered behind my mother as we walked into our house. Waves of new faces kept coming to greet and welcome us — some of which I recognized from my mom’s debrief earlier. It soon became a recurring theme in which the family members tried to talk to me in Telugu and I was unable to respond in a like manner. I could feel the blood rush to my face as I grew increasingly self-conscious and shy to a point where I would simply flash a halfhearted smile at the new faces. I had only one feeling in my stomach and one thought in my mind — the longing to go home. Even though I was supposed to feel at home, I was not able to. Family were strangers and the language was foreign still. This fixed mindset of mine caused me to hardly interact with anyone other than my parents. I felt awkward and out of place.
Lucky for me, the wedding came and went, and I was flying back to the States with my family in what felt like no time. I was back in my comfort zone. That wasn’t the end of it though, would this really be a story if it was? Not long after being back at home, my parents checked in on me. They had noticed my sudden change in behavior during our visit. I had always been a happy, mischievous, and fun-loving kid; however, my demeanor was starkly different. I wouldn’t talk to anyone, was shy, and mostly kept to myself. My parents wanted to know if something was wrong, and I eventually confessed. I tried my best to explain to them how I felt, and they helped me feel better.
My Mom was the one who made the decision to try and teach me Telugu. Embarking on this journey was a transformative one for me. It started with my mom slowly slipping in Telugu whenever we chatted. She encouraged me to use a few new words in Telugu each day too. I gradually learnt the Telugu words for different items around the house like scissors”, “bed”, “chair”, and “book”. There were many phonetics in Telugu that were new to me that made me cringe every time I tried to pronounce them. My fixed mindset remained. Every time I felt challenged or hit a roadblock, I felt incapable and thought to myself "I can’t do this." Feedback was my worst enemy, but my mom made sure that I did not give up. Before I knew it, I started watching Telugu movies with my parents. I was clueless for the most part and my parents would have to constantly fill me in on what was going on. Eventually, my vocabulary enhanced, and I was able to use a handful of Telugu words and even started to pick up on sentence structure. I started feeling more confident and comfortable speaking in Telugu.
The second half of my journey came unexpectedly when I had to travel to India again the next summer. My parents had urgent business to tend to and last-minute arrangements were made for me to stay with my grandparents for a couple months. It was a wildly different experience this time around. I got to show off my new language skills and was much more comfortable conversing in Telugu. It was my grandfather who took me under his wing and became my guide to mastering the language. Instead of formal lessons, my grandfather took a more unconventional approach in teaching me how to read and write the language. We started with the basics of learning the alphabet. The weird script of the language which included a bunch of funny looking shapes and curves made me anxious initially. It felt more like drawing than writing. However, I embraced the challenge this time. I felt more confident in my ability to learn something new and was not afraid of messing up. I spent some time practicing writing the alphabet. Once my grandfather felt that I was proficient enough, he handed me Telugu newspaper articles and magazines to read. His patience during these lessons was a game changer, he encouraged me to embrace mistakes and learn from them. He read along with me, syllable by syllable as we pieced together words and deciphered their meanings. We would spend hours discussing the content and putting together words to form sentences.
In the end, my journey to learn Telugu wasn't just about learning a new language; it became a cherished bond between my grandfather and I. The moments I shared with him while conquering Telugu as well as my fixed mindset were the threads that wove our unique connection, and the experience became one of my fondest memories with him.