I grew up watching Hindi movies as a child, like most children of Indian immigrants. I didn't understand Hindi, so I read the subtitles fervently. I read as much as I could when I was young, about five years old, because my brother, twelve, was annoyingly good at reading. So if the movie had no subtitles, I refused to watch it. If it did, I barely watched the actors, I just read the subtitles -- except during the songs, obviously.

As a result, I never really learned Hindi. I understood Gujarati pretty well since it was spoken often by my parents at home, at temples, and if I was watching too much TV on a Saturday morning. Hindi, though, was Gujarati's edgy, artistic cousin. It felt like the way the characters speak in Game of Thrones -- kinda funny sounding, but also cool somehow, and not something I would speak unless I was doing a bit. The years passed and I got better at understanding and speaking Gujarati, but Hindi remained the interesting, big boy language that I could only understand and speak a bit, and, therefore, envied.

More recently, as I've dived headfirst into the really white real world, I haven't spoken much Gujarati or read many subtitles for Hindi films. Of course, as is the disgustingly predictable rule of how human beings work, I started to miss that part of me. So I asked my dad to speak with me in Gujarati whenever we talk... and he said no! What the fuck? Here I am, the miracle baby second child does no wrong trying to learn about my roots or whatever, and my dad shuts me down. He tells me he's not good at Gujarati. I'm floored. I'm pretty sure I've been telling all my friends since I was like six that my parents speak Gujarati at home and that's how I understand it and I can totally speak it too. He tells me he doesn't really speak Gujarati. He went to an English medium school (like an immersion program), and he spoke Hindi with his father at home. Hindi?! Is this some sick joke? That was the language of star-crossed lovers and Bollywood elitists and people who work at Patel Brothers. It was the language that we spoke only when absolutely necessary, speaking it was like wearing the One Ring; utter its unholy, daring, absolutely badass words, and the Nazgul would surely find you.

I'm pretty sure I was too confused to talk to him about languages after that. I think Hindi is his first, English is his second, and Gujarati is his third (He claims he knows more but I don't buy it). He doesn't speak it much because my mom makes fun of him when he messes it up (she went to Gujarati medium school). Sick! My mom makes fun of me when I mess it up, too! I should talk to him about it before publishing his linguistic secrets to the Internet right? Wrong. There's still more bullshit that I have to unpack before I climb that mountain to my father's throne for him to tell me he's not really from India and my mom makes fun of him when he says he is.

He told me he's most comfortable with Hindi (a language he rarely speaks nowadays), a few weeks ago. It's fundamentally changed the way I understand myself and my parents. It contextualizes every petty argument my parents have ever had (there was a fucking language barrier). It makes it painfully obvious just how different my parents' upbringings were. It tells me why my dad is comfortable picking up and moving wherever he needs to go and my mother longs for Gujarati people, places, and things. All the realization is fuckin exhausting. I thought Hindi was the long-lost language, like I thought Latin is to native English speakers. Yeah, you can learn it but it's a dead language, no one speaks it. Well people speak it but just in places that don't matter. Freakin' doofus, I know.

It turns out hundreds of millions of people speak it. And more than that, it would be the best way to understand my father's personality. My mom speaks English but she usually just sounds frustrated and in a rush when she speaks it. Which is weird because all my American friends like her. But I only feel like I'm seeing the real her when she's speaking to me in Gujarati. Meanwhile, I've deprived my dad, for my whole life, of that opportunity to be seen. It's not my fault, I guess, just the way the cards played out. Still, it seems now like I could have, should have, spoken a whole 'nother language for most of my life. Arrogant maybe, considering my tenuous grasp on Gujarati.

Gujarati is first on my list since I think I owe most of the people in my elementary school an apology for telling them I speak it fluently. There are a lot more conversations I have to have with my parents after that. Haven't decided what language they're gonna be in.