Sow Words. Harvest Worlds.
Spring Essay Writing Contest Response
“So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.”
— Roald Dahl, ‘Matilda’
In India, most girls leave the comfort of the home they grew up in, to live with their husband and his family, in his house, once they are married. This is what my mother had to do, too.
In a society that values and worships fair skin, my mother’s dark skin was reason for ridicule and taunting. My father and his family are all light-skinned and light-eyed. The fact that my mother was a postgraduate in Sanskrit Literature, at a time when most girls were not permitted to go to school, was also a sore point. My mother was sensitive: words hurt her and she broke down often.
But through all that pain, and trauma, she realised that the same words that broke her would also heal her. And knowing their power, she harnessed them into weapons of mass destruction.
She also decided to clothe us, her three children in a mantle of words. Those words not only cloaked us, but they also became our second skin. Unlike Achilles, even our heels were covered with them.
My mother sowed words in the spring of her life. She sowed them in her own life. She sowed them in ours.
She sowed the seeds of words carefully into our lives. She made sure that the seeds were planted in fertile soil, that they were protected when they began growing, and were defenseless. She made sure that the fierceness of the sun, or the waywardness of winds did not destroy them.
My mother fought, her back to the wall, against her entire family, to make sure that we went to the best school possible, a school that encouraged reading, and free thought.
She also taught us, by precept and practice, that education is never wasted and that thoughts need words to arm them and make them tender, or lethal.
‘I am still committed to the idea that the ability to think for one’s self depends upon one’s mastery of the language.’
— Joan Didion: ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’
Sitting here and writing this, I can feel my eyes mist over. It must have been a lonely battle, and a tough one.
There was no prolonged war, in my mother’s case: there were small battles and skirmishes. No quarter was given, no prisoners taken. But they all bled the soul.
I had a glimpse into how she had honed words to lethal perfection, once. I was 20 years old at the time, pursuing my Masters in English Language and Literature, at Maharaja’s College, Kochi.
My mother had a collection of beautiful nature photographs that she had got framed and loved. My father wanted to lend one of them to a friend, for a gathering in the friend’s house. My mother refused. My father persuaded, trying to convince her. Irritated and pushed to a corner, she told him, “Take it. But if you don’t bring it back in the same condition, I shall decimate him. And you.” That’s the word she used. I, filled with the arrogance of having read a lot of books, and having a ‘great’ vocabulary at the time, was cowed into respectful silence.
My father decided that it was not worth taking the picture after all.
‘Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they’ll go through anything.’
— Aldous Huxley, ‘Brave New World’
From the age of three, she gave us books to read. The Central School she taught Sanskrit Language in, had a state-of-the-art library. She read to us first, ignoring jibes and taunts. Later, she got transferred to another place in Kerala, where she could take herself, her children, her dreams…and her words, too. Later, she got transferred to Avadi Central School, Chennai. And then back to Kerala again.
Through all her peregrinations, she took us with her, enrolled us in the schools she taught in. She ensured that the world of words would be both weapon and refuge for all three of us.
“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.”
— Patrick Rothfuss, ‘The Name of the Wind’
My mother loved words and saw connections in them that only someone who thought very deeply about language could discover. She could translate Shakespeare into Malayalam, and that, into Sanskrit. Her pet hobby was creating what she called ‘parallel quotations’: quotes from Malayalam, Sanskrit, and English, which had more or less similar meanings.
She planted in her three children a deep and abiding love of etymology. From simple words and connections like ‘mater, mother, mathru’ to the names of the planets and the stories and myths behind them, she helped us discover roots, and look for linguistic stems, branches, and flowers.
“She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.”
— Michael Ondaatje, ‘The English Patient’
So when I teach in class, and explain, that the word ‘ignite’, comes from the name of the God of Fire, Agni, and I see and revel in the wonder on kids’ faces, I am only harvesting what she planted in me.
I feel this surge of adrenalin when I connect words like ‘tele’, and ‘photo’, and ‘cardio’, to present-day words. Or tell my students the word origins of ‘dilapidate’. Or the history behind why some words are Anglo-Saxon, but words related to them, have a French origin. Like ‘goat’ and ‘mutton’. Or how the word ‘lord’, comes from ‘hlaford’, and ‘lady’ comes from ‘hlafdige’, or what is meant by the phrase, ‘on the distaff side’, and how the words originated.
I could go on and on. And on. Words intoxicate me and make me high in a way that nothing else can.
We were on our morning walk today, my husband and I, when we smelt something truly noisome. We took a detour, and I explained to him the meaning of the word, and origin, of ‘malaria’, and he looked suitably impressed.
Just for good measure, I asked him what ‘usquebaugh’ meant, and I told him he drank it sometimes. Then I told him what it meant, and he claimed that he knew it all the time…
My brother, who continued his studies in languages informally and on his own, knows enough Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin to hold his own in any debate or conversation. This, despite working in a high-pressure job, as the Superintendent, in the central excise department of the government.
My sister, a doctor in Michigan, has managed, despite a punishing schedule and being a hands-on mother and wife, and a cancer survivor, to write two books, and land book deals for both.
And a lot of this passion for words rubbed off on my father, too. He completed a Certificate Course in Hindi and knows how to read Sanskrit fluently. He was in Mumbai once, and we were traveling by car when he read a sign on another, passing vehicle. It said ‘Rugnvahika.’ It was a word he had never come across. He said, “In Sanskrit, ‘Rugn’, means blood, so this should be an ambulance because ‘vaahan’, is ‘vehicle.’ ” And he looked at us, smiling in gentle triumph.
In the spring of my mother’s life, she sowed words and a love of words in our lives. She told us that words have a life of their own and must never be used to hurt. She knew, who better, that words could heal hearts, soothe souls and touch lives. She taught us that if we sowed a crop of words and increased the extent of the land, planting more as our life progressed, the harvest they would yield would be worth more than all the wealth in the world.
“I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine.”
— Emily Dickinson
ⓒ 2023 Suma Narayan. All Rights Reserved.
