Lalit Gupta
It was only after encountering Mikhail Bakhtin one too many times and delving into his formulation ‘heteroglossia’-a term that celebrates the coexistence of multiple voices within language-that I began to trace the contours of my own multilingual life.
Reading about translanguaging bilingualism and multilingualism, I had an epiphany that revealed the cause of my own penchant for languages. Am I not given to colouring my Dogri and Hindustani speech with monosyllabic words/expressions/ adages owing to my rich palette of Dogri, English, Urdu, Kashmiri, Gujarati, Marathi, and even Malayalam languages? And don’t I sprinkle on my conversation choice Persian idioms like “pidram Sultan bood” – my father was a king! – To mock the conceited interlocutors? Is it not a quirk of mine (for which I am too often lambasted) to switch languages without any apparent reason?
Not my fault, I dare say. I was born, believe me, with two tongues to speak. Dogri and Mirpuri (or Pothohari), courtesy of a Dogra mother from Samba and a Mirpuri father, a refugee from 1947.
Dogri was the dominant language at home. My siblings and I – all six of them-dream, think and talk in Dogri. Mirpuri surfaced during frequent visits in our greener years to patriarchal aunts, uncles and cousins. I, thus, naturally absorbed the tone and tenor of Mirpuri language, albeit, with a very limited vocabulary of terms and expressions.
The only time we heard Mirpuri in the public places was when our elders in convivial wedding ceremonies and heavily attended funerals talked, laughed and cut jokes as if they were reliving the carefree days of Mirpur of yore.
Jammu is a city where many languages exist side by side. In the Panjtirthi Mohalla of old Jammu city, where I spent my childhood in early 1960s, two ageing Mirpuri women often drew the attention of the passersby. They would talk to each other in Mirpuri full-throated from the rooftops of their double-storied rented houses separated by a ‘khola’- an open plot of land. The smirks and grins of the wayfarers and idlers showed how the chitchat of the venerable ladies became a free source of amusement for one and all.
Mirpuri language was the language of outsiders. It was a vernacular of displacement spoken in the refugee colonies of Roulki, Gurha, and Sarwal.
While Kashmiri was the language of Kashmiri Pandits and Muslims, the seasonal visitors from the Valley who descended to the warmer climes of Jammu during winter. Mirpuri and Kashmiri were the languages of ‘others’, and were often scorned for their ‘funny’ accents, imitated by the local youth and children for sheer fun.
But this has not been the case with Gojari: it enjoyed a subtle acceptance in Jammu’s civil society. Spoken by Gujjar men and women who entered Dogra households of various mohallas of Jammu city every morning as welcome providers of fresh milk. Children, including myself, often mimicked their friendly tones and unintentionally picked up bits of Gojari.
Tall Gujjar men, resplendent in their white kurta, tehmad, and a scarf, or a safa on the head; and Gujjar women clad in colorful salwar and kameez with silver ornaments, were eye-catching visitors, who, irrespective of their gender, enjoyed lusty drags from beedies and cigarettes.
Gujjars would speak among themselves in Gojari, their own tongue, Dogri to Dogra elders and Punjabi with urban customers. They were the polyglots of the street who bore multilingualism with ease, not apology.
Language, I came to understand, was more than speech – it was embodied performance, Mirpuri in particular has an expressive and performative quality. Conversations are frequently punctuated by physical gestures, caresses, and dramatic intonations. Emotional expressions like “biting one’s fingers in surprise” are not just metaphors but semiotic gestures, reminiscent of the expressive body language in Mughal miniature paintings. In this sense, Mirpuri/Photohari is not just a dialect; it is an aesthetic.
Over the years, I’ve found myself layering Dogri, English, Urdu, Kashmiri, Gujrati, Marathi, even Malayalam into my speech – a palette of languages shaped by friends, plays enacted, books, films, and movement. Sometimes I switch mid-sentence, not out of affectation, but because only a certain word from another language can convey what I mean. Like Kashmiri expression ‘maeng daed’ for both Head Ache and someone who is a nuisance. Gujarati expression like ‘locha’ ‘bapari nakhayo’ for something went wrong, and something spent, used, etc.
And yes, I’ve been scolded for it – for not sticking to one language, for sounding “too much” or “too mixed up.” But I wear it now as a badge of identity. Not confusion, but abundance: A testament to the polyphonic soul of Jammu.
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