I have become very conscious of the fact that a lot of my life is dominated by English. This has come about largely because of the questions my colleagues and I have faced, for some years now, on how relevant our theatre work really is to the context we live in. I have vehemently defended our and my choice of English for very long. But of late I am beginning to reconsider.

Yesterday, I helped a friend conduct a movement session. My job was to translate what he said in English to Kannada. It was a Feldenkrais session and much to our disappointment, we found that the group that had arrived was well versed in both languages, most of them at least. But we went ahead anyway and I discovered how bad my Kannada had become. I struggled for words and especially with conveying the right meaning, as my friend meant it.

I have had this experience before, a few years ago. In many theatre workshops, I translated into Kannada whatever was being said in English and there was much that was lost. Not only meaning, but also experience as a consequence of that.

I watched Kuvempu’s Kindari Jogi in Kannada over the weekend and was struck by how differently the actors moved and spoke, how different their expression was (I mean this very simply – how they communicated anger) and of course, the response they received from the audience was one I have never found with English theatre. (And their use of English was fantastic – in much the same way as a Lingo Leela would use English with a Kannada accent. It was really funny.)

Recently, I have been reading English translations of writing in Kannada (part of research for the next theatre project). The translations rob the beauty of  Kannada and sometimes obscure much of the meaning. It has been frustrating. But I also find the writing so different from contemporary English writing. The imagination and sensibility in Kannada writing seems worlds apart from the English. So much so that I have begun believing that people who speak different languages inhabit different worlds.

Hmmmm. Inhabit is a good word. How we inhabit the world we live in is informed so much by the language. The meanings we create for ourselves depends on the language. And so again, the monster raises it’s head again – How removed or connected am I really to the world I want so much to live in. ( This is also connected with the whole ‘Indian’ question.)

I wonder what would happen if I gave up English and all things ‘English’ for a bit. Wore only Indian clothes, spoke and read only in an Indian language, wrote in that as well. So many things might just become irrelevant and meaningless. What would my world look like?