Learning the language of my ancestors

Letters to a friend #18 - Reconnecting with my roots through the spoken language

“I understand you, but I can’t speak to you.”It sounds like a line from a romantic comedy, something said in the middle of a dramatic breakup. But for me, it’s what I’ve indirectly told many people when they ask if I can speak Urdu.

Every time those words leave me, guilt quickly follows. It’s a reminder of a disconnect, one that runs deep between me and my roots. Still, that feeling never moved me to action beyond the occasional “Only speak to me in Urdu” conversations with my parents. I always pushed it off as something I’d get to eventually.

Part of that was logic. Urdu is only spoken in one country and doesn’t hold the same utility as Spanish, Arabic, or Mandarin. And I figured my understanding was good enough that if I ever decided to really learn, it would come quickly. But this year, I decided to stop waiting. I wanted to bridge the disconnect and commit myself to learning Urdu, not perfectly, but functionally. My goal was simple: to be able to express my thoughts without spending forever trying to piece them together.

The Context

I grew up in a household filled with noise, the kind that came from my dad’s 1950s Bollywood songs playing in the background or the loud chatter of uncles and aunties echoing through the house. In those moments, it felt like my parents were still in India. But outside the walls of our home, the world was very different. We were in America, and like many children of immigrants, we were raised with a strong emphasis on academic success—what some might call the FOB-to-Ivy League pipeline.

For my parents, this meant not insisting we speak Urdu at home, afraid it might hold us back in English. That philosophy, compounded with the fact that my siblings and I mostly spoke English to each other, so each of us grew up knowing a little less Urdu than the one before. That said, we weren’t strangers to the language; we had a good understanding of it. When your parents are scolding you in their native tongue, you tend to pick things up pretty fast. But comprehension isn’t the same as fluency. We could understand, but we couldn’t truly express ourselves in return.

That gap, the inability to fully communicate back, is what eventually led me to hire an Urdu teacher.

The Difficulties

I enjoyed learning the grammatical structure behind phrases I already knew. It was like discovering the logic behind something I’d always accepted intuitively: similar to finally seeing the proof behind a math theorem. But like any new skill, the beginning is full of friction and embarrassment. I was hesitant to speak in front of my parents and roommate. I didn’t like the idea of struggling in front of them, especially with something I should already know.

But eventually, that feeling began to fade. The more I practiced, the more confident I felt. Slowly, I became comfortable sounding unsure, and to get better.

A Connection to Roots

There’s a quote from Nelson Mandela that I’ve come back to often:"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart."

Language holds emotion. It unlocks a piece of culture that doesn’t fully exist in translation. Learning Urdu has allowed me to better understand and access ideas that I’d only felt before. Urdu in particular is expressive, romantic, emotional, and poetic. I used to feel that in the way my parents spoke to me, or in the lyrics of Kal Ho Naa Ho. But now, I can finally start to share those feelings myself. I can express what I used to only consume. A prominent example is the use of the word “Takalluf” an Urdu word that captures a kind of formal politeness or social grace, often marked by an exaggerated sense of manners. It’s that dance of ritual courtesy, like when you politely refuse the Eidi (money given during Eid) from your auntie two or three times, even though you fully plan to take it in the end. It's less about sincerity and more about the shared performance of respect. These simple yet prominent traditions can only be encompassed by exploring the culture through language.

What’s Next

My goal isn’t perfection, it’s connection. I want to hold a conversation fluidly, without fear or hesitation. In November, I’ll be traveling to India, and I’m excited to speak to my family in the language they grew up with. To not only close the physical distance between us, but also the emotional one, and to reach not just their minds, but their hearts.

In India, there’s a growing trend of English becoming the default language for the younger generations. Even my little cousins struggle to speak Urdu fluently. And with that, parts of our culture are beginning to disappear. Despite being a generation (and thousands of miles) removed, I don’t want to be part of that decline. I want my kids and their kids to speak the language of my grandfather and his grandfather. To sing the songs I sang. To feel the weight of our stories. Not just to understand them, but to feel them.

Jai Hind.

That’s all for now; I hope your week was fantastic and that this helped you dive a little deeper beneath the surface!

Best,

Yusuf Malik