When I visited Morocco in 2024, I was able to easily appear as a local because of the way I look. My Arabic? It’s shocking!
Frustrated, people would ask: India?
Yes!
Sharukh Khan?
Yes!
Mithun Chakravarty?
Yes!
And that was it, communication was made, the message was received.
That made me realise, that weird conversation, the words for which were only two Bollywood actors whom I don’t even like that much – was conducted in a different language. A language I didn’t even know that I spoke.
Last summer, I began researching multilingual creativity in the north-east of England, thanks to a placement with New Writing North, a Newcastle based writer development agency. I ran a series of workshops on multilingual creativity, designed to unlock the secret places different languages hold within us. I met writers, poets, artists working with several languages and what I discovered has made me deeply committed to this research now.
We have different relationships with the different languages we speak, when we speak them, how we acquired them, who we speak them with all affect that relationship.
It’s when you try to create with this different languages within you that the magic starts.
Malya b 