College Essay (Unedited)

Thought I'd share a rough college app essay I wrote about my experiences in learning Hindi.

3. Select some experience from which you have derived exceptional benefit and describe it, explaining its importance to you.

I am accustomed to looking like a barking chicken. Whenever I tell people that I am teaching myself Hindi, I get one of two reactions: blank stares (typically from my “gori”, American friends) or “Va! Aap kaafi aachhi Hindi bolti hain!”, which is really far too much praise from a native speaker for muttering a shy “Kya tum Hindi bolte ho?” (Do you speak Hindi?)

In Hindi, you answer the phone “Victory to Vishnu!” You drink a cigarette; the night spreads; you eat a beating. You eat the sun. (Dhoop khaana means ‘sunbathing.’) One misplaced m, and you’re no longer saying ‘weather’ but ‘husband of maternal aunt’. You have to think in sentences whose verbs go at the end, to the effect of producing vertigo: ‘to the school the teacher the child is taking.’ The future and the past are summed up in the same word: kal. In Hindi, everything is right now, and also forever. When you consider that the Hindi word for ‘today’ also means ‘come here’ and ‘right now,’ your heart beats a little faster; you begin to panic. A Fatboy Slim track runs through your head. Language does something to us. It’s something exhilarating and at times transcendent, all in a way that feels deeply corporeal. With every new word, we become slightly different, not quite our old selves.

I always have to remind myself that the joy of learning Hindi is that it isn’t easy. Every new word curling against the page is so abstract from the limitations of my Western-thinking mind, sometimes even one new sound, one new arrangement of a sentence, can open up a whole new world inside my mind. Lakshya, meaning ‘luck’, brings the faint remembrance of marigold-scented Holi cards opened on my way to school on a blustery March day – the winds of fate. Prerna, ‘inspiration’, recalls the quiet harmony of a spring morning overlooking a lake, humming radio rock tunes with a group of people I have just met the night before – not a moment of understanding, but a moment of not needing to understand. Aakaash, the Hindi word for ‘sky’, offers the anticipatory taste of a summer hail storm on the tongue – a momentary flash of Krishna-blue lightning. Intizaar, ‘longing’, is the gulping moment between a classmate asking you on a date and your response. To me, these aren’t just words. These are Lilliputian victories; the foundational blocks of a seemingly alternate universe. There is an old Czech proverb: you live a new life for every new language you speak. It’s as if I’m feeling the universe expand beneath my very feet.

And yet, things crumble. There is no word for ‘handicapped’, only “somewhat decrepit.” My sense of virtue is thrown through a loop when I learn that the ultimate act of devotion for a Hindu wife is to become a satima, accomplished by casting her body onto her husband’s flaming funeral pyre. The practice was outlawed during British rule in the 1800s, but old habits die hard in India. Halfway through a conversation about Indian impoverishment and sex trafficking, a girl I’ve just met tells me that her grandmother was Indian. Cherokee, in fact. I am appalled when I ask a friend in faltering Hindi – partially incompetence, partially the knot of tears in my throat – if it is true that the police beat the lower castes without reason. “Zaroor! Ve apne maar arjeet ki hai,” he laughs. Of course. They have earned their reasons, he says – he is referring, of course, to karma, a concept most westerners only give a passing nod.

It doesn’t take long to realize that language is fleeting, fragile. The sense of power you once wielded with the pen is diminished. You are silent. You can barely excuse yourself to scuttle off to the bathroom, even though your ego feels as though it’s been tossed in a blender and, at any second, you just know you’re going to throw up. Curled over the sink, you find a jar of Fair and Lovely cream on the countertop; impulsively empty it into the toilet. You realize that intelligence, like beauty, is relative; largely a point of vanity. With each new word, something you thought you knew for sure in your mother tongue is stripped away. You feel raw, exposed. Brought to your knees, you begin to appreciate life in a whole new light.