I am a big proponent of using our native languages in regular settings. It’s a big part of our culture. And identity.

There have been quite a few discussions at the workplace and at home, where I have taken the side of the native language.

I feel it is incumbent upon each one of us, as an inheritor of our rich culture(s) and traditions, to embed them into our daily lives. So that we carry on with the torch before passing it to the next generation.

Naturally, we have enrolled our daughter to learn Hindi as the additional language of choice at the school. It’s one way to provide her a structured environment to grasp the details.

This week, when we visited her school for a parents-teachers meet, I expected her Hindi teacher to talk to us about how we should encourage her to do more in Hindi. She did that but she also talked about another important aspect that stuck with me.

She talked about how through our native language children connect with their roots and how it shapes their association with the family, especially as they grow through teenage into adulthood.

While I was quite impressed by what she said and how she did so, what stuck me more was that our mother tongue forms a core part of our identity.

As I looked back at my own childhood and teenage, I realised that my tryst with Hindi, the times spent listening to stories from my grandmother, reading Hindi comic books, the countless fun conversations we had around the house in our mother tongue, all of them helped shape me.

More importantly, they connected me to my roots. To my family. And that has stayed with me all my life.

I don’t feel the same level of connectedness when I talk in English today. Not that I consider English to be a second grade citizen, but it doesn’t have the same effect. It feels neutral.

I know it’s not easy. The environment today around us in Indian cities is geared towards English. Our kids have multi-cultural influences and friends, and therefore English becomes the common ground to connect.

But if I don’t make the effort, at least at home, to use our mother tongue, the native connection that I built with my roots may not happen with my daughter.

So while I do want her to be fluent in English and be ready for the future, I also want her to be connected to her roots, natively…