Not Lost in Translation

I have been visiting a lot of churches lately. It is hard not to when you are traveling around Europe. They are huge, quiet, and usually right in the middle of a busy city. Outside those thick wooden doors, my brain is constantly working. I use my English skills to get by, which works fine most of the time. But I also try to use my German, and that is a completely different story. It is actually quite funny. I can stand in a coffee shop or a train station and understand almost everything people are saying to me. My brain translates their German perfectly well. I know exactly what they are asking. But the moment I open my mouth to reply, I completely fumble. I'm blank. I can barely put together more than a few basic sentences. If a cashier asks me a simple follow-up question, I panic. I just nod, smile awkwardly, say a broken German word, and walk away hoping (overthinking!) I made sense. Sometimes it is exhausting to constantly translate your life and pretend you know what you are doing.

So, back to the story; whenever I walk into one of these churches, the sudden silence is a huge relief. You don't have to talk to anyone. Recently, I was sitting in one of the huge churches. I just sat on the wooden bench, closed my eyes, and started to talking /thinking (Marathi has a simple phrase to describe this, btw). It is just what we do when we find a quiet religious place. It was very peaceful. But then, right in the middle of a thought, I stopped. I opened my eyes and looked around. A very funny thought struck me. Outside, I was struggling with German and relying on English just to ask something or pay. But inside my head, talking to God, or thinking, I was speaking entirely in Marathi. I was thousands of miles away from home and my brain just defaulted to my mother tongue. 

It made me wonder how innocent we humans are. We walk into any religious place in the world and just assume we will be heard. We believe that God, or whatever we believe in, is going to listen to us. We don't worry about the language barrier. I used to think about this back home, too. We see people traveling in massive crowds to temples all over the country. Most of the time, the visitors barely know the local culture. We don't speak the regional language of that specific region. We don't even know the rituals. We just stand in long queues for hours, and when it is our turn, we awkwardly copy whatever the person directly in front of us is doing. But when we finally get a moment to pray, to think , to say what's on our mind, we just close our eyes and use our native language. We never wonder if the local deity understands us. I guess our faith simply holds a much stronger value than our logic. We just trust that someone is listening, no matter how we sound.

There is a very simple reason why my brain switched to Marathi in that church. I use English to read research papers, write emails, (not the least) write such blogs, and sound like a capable 2nd language user. I fumble with German and other Indian languages. We use these learned languages to survive in the world. You always have to think before you speak them. You are always editing your thoughts. But a mother tongue is different. You never have to think about it. When we are scared, when we are hurt, or when we are asking for something with total honesty, the brain drops the act. Praying is a very vulnerable thing. You are asking for peace, or just hoping things turn out okay for the people you love or maybe you hope to be heard. The thoughts that you cannot loudly tell others because they are vulnerable. You cannot translate those feelings into a second language. You need the exact words you grew up with to feel safe.  

I sat there for a few more minutes. I smiled at my own little realization. It is funny how much effort we put into learning new languages and switch to the first one when we actually need to say something important. I closed my eyes again and finished my prayer. I kept talking in Marathi. I didn't try to switch to English or test out my broken German. I figured that if there really is someone/ some power listening up there, everything we carry inside is not lost in translation. Understanding one more language wouldn't be an issue at all at the other end. :)