Scott Drummond

“Na mommy, ah-mee jete chai-na!” “No mommy, I don’t want to go!” I began my first day of preschool in Kuwait, where I lived for a year and half, with pouts and pleas to stay at home. No more afternoons watching the Mickey Mouse Club and drinking banana milk at home with my mom.

And as if going to school in a new country weren’t enough for my 4-year-old mind to comprehend, I wouldn’t be speaking Bengali, the language of my parents’ native country Bangladesh, in the classroom. At the time I understood and spoke both Bengali and English, but when my mom told me I’d have to speak English at preschool, I threw a fit. After some coercing from my mom and a glass of banana milk, I gave in and my mom taught me a few key, polite phrases to use while I was at school: “Teacher, I want to go outside and play,” “Teacher, I want something to eat,” and the all-important “Teacher, I have to go to the bathroom.” Now I’m a different person from that little girl who sniffed at the idea of speaking English all the time.

We moved back to the United States when I was 5. I started school and barely spoke Bengali again. Because my parents were comfortable switching back and forth with English, and because I started to show a preference for speaking English, they never insisted I speak their mother tongue at home. As a result, my Bengali was stunted at a kindergartner’s level.

I never really shunned the ethnic half of my personality, but I didn’t fully embrace it, either. Most everyone I knew growing up were white Americans, so my childhood was filled with turkey sandwiches for lunch at school and rice with curries for dinner at home. It was always a balancing act for me, but I tended to focus more on the tangible parts of my culture — the clothes and the food — as the language faded further and further into the background.

A new language appeared in my life around middle school, when I began learning Spanish. It was then I realized how sad my Bengali speaking skills had become. I could translate an English word into Spanish quicker than I could to Bengali. It took an embarrassing incident at a family dinner to finally convince me that in abandoning Bengali, I was denying a crucial part of myself.

At one point in high school, my uncle and his family from Bangladesh were living with us. In accommodating my cousins and aunt whose English wasn’t so good, a perfect opportunity opened up to practice my speaking skills. I was decent but struggled sometimes to get my point across. That opportunity soon turned into a nightmare one night at the dinner table. As we were finishing the meal, I was trying to compliment my aunt on one of the dishes she made. “Thomar raana khub moh-ja,” I said smiling at her, under the impression that I had said her cooking was delicious. The whole table, even my parents, erupted in a thunderous clap of laughter and pointed at me, while through their gasps tried to correct me. In my error, a stellar example showcasing my ignorance of the delicate pronunciations of Bengali words and my strong American accent, I’d called my aunt’s cooking moh-ja (socks) instead of maw-ja (delicious). I might as well have saved myself the trouble and said her cooking stunk like the socks I’d forgotten to change that day. Everyone else thought my mistake was “cute,” but I wasn’t laughing. Mortified, I ran to the bathroom to cry and wallow alone in my humiliation. I confronted my mom later and asked her why she would laugh at me when she knew how sensitive I was. She replied with an exasperated sigh and then a chuckle and explained she wasn’t laughing at me but more at the way my little mistake sounded, like a child who couldn’t quite speak properly yet. But I wasn’t a child. I was 17 years old, and I’d wasted my bilingual birthright.

Fast-forward a couple of years. My interest in improving my speaking skills was renewed recently when a friend came back from visiting India. After being there for only three weeks during winter break, he “picked up” reading and writing Hindi another South Asian language, similar to Bengali. Watching him carefully shape the letters of Hindi script to write “Maha,” and grin with pleasure after sounding out a sentence from a Hindi newspaper, I wasn’t clapping and cheering with the rest of my friends at his accomplishment. Instead, I felt horrified and ashamed at myself. He could read and write Hindi after only 21 days of visiting a land and culture completely foreign to him, but after 21 years, I could only write my name in Bengali and speak at a level that would rival a 5-year-old’s.

Armed with newfound courage and taking advantage of the fact that it was the new year, I made a resolution to take small steps in improving my speaking skills by using the resources I have: my parents. To waste this skill would be a huge mistake, and I decided that I needed to put aside my fear of looking stupid in front of others. Now when I call my mom, I no longer just ask her how she is, but smiling shyly, even though I realize how ridiculous it is that I’m smiling at a phone, I say “Kemon aacho? Kee khobor?” Meaning “How are you? What’s up?” As I do, I can sense her smile as she replies back, “Ehto, bhalo aachee. Behshee keechu na. Raana korchee,” or “I’m fine, nothing much, just doing some cooking.” Now I hang up the phone feeling satisfied with myself that I am making an effort. I feel closer to my culture and to myself because it’s like I’ve found a part of myself I thought I’d lost, and this time I’m moving a little further from turkey sandwiches and back to rice and curry.