In a mother’s tongue

E bera beti iyam tany maarchi baari te, bera beti iyam tany
Dhany se dadaa jo denaam re, biha gote ni
man majoor dena laa re, biha gote ni,
maarchi baari te, bera beti iyam tany
Dhany se dadaa jo denaam re, biha gote ni

[Our daughter weeps in the green chilli fields
Father, go fix the match for me, she says, tie the knot for me
We’ve found each other, dada, get him married to me.
Our daughter weeps in the green chilli fields.
Father go fix the match for me, she says, tie the knot for me.]

Lakheshwari Bai Kharia is transported to another world as she sings, her eyes cast down, staring at the microphone she is holding in her hand. It is an unusual moment for her. Few around Lakheshwari are interested in listening to her sing or speak in the tongue we are recording her in. But with each word, her mind travels 160 kilometres in a millisecond to Raigarh, where these very sounds had filled her childhood years.

“Who should I talk to now? My in-laws are not there any more. I tell the children, ‘talk to me in your mother tongue and learn it from me.’ But where do these children listen? Forget the grandchildren, I am the only one left in this entire village who speaks Kharia,” says the 55-year-old Adivasi woman from Patandadar, in a pained voice.

Known by the name ‘Juna’ in this village in Mahasamund district, Lakheshwari Bai settled here after she got married to Budhuwa Kharia, now in his sixties. A couple of acres of land that they got from the state government is not enough to make ends meet and so both husband and wife also work as agricultural labourers. “When I came here from Raigarh I spoke in Kharia to my in-laws. Now they are gone and I have no one to speak the language to,” says Lakheshwari. “I can’t pronounce the words right and so I refrain from using it,” explains her husband Budhuwa. “Here Chhattaisgarhi rules. Who will understand this language?”

More than nine decades ago a few families belonging to the Kharia tribe had moved from Raigarh to Patandadar in search of livelihood. The village still has four to five families from the same tribe but they all speak in Chhattisgarhi. Lakheshwari is the last speaker of Kharia in this village.

Kharia belongs to the Austro-Asiatic language group mainly spoken by the Kharia tribe clans, spread across Odisha, Jharkhand and West Bengal. Their population in Chhattisgarh, close to 49,000, is concentrated around Raigarh and Jashpur districts. Their language without a script of its own (it often uses either Devanagari, Bengali, or Odia scripts for writing) is classified as a potentially vulnerable language by UNESCO.

“I kept talking to both my sons and my daughter in Kharia. But they never responded. Grandchildren understand it a little but they don’t like to speak it. They all use only Chhattisgarhi,” says Lakheshwari.

A professor of Anthropology at Pandit Ravishankar Shukla University in Chhattisgarh’s Raipur, Ashok Pradhan has been working with many Adivasi communities. Explaining the decline of the language he says, “as deforestation raged, the members of this forest-dwelling tribe started settling on the plains in search of livelihood. The younger generation is embracing local languages like Chhattisgarhi or Sambalpuri. And as the families stop speaking the language, it dies with the elders in the community.”

The two sons of Lakheshwari and Budhuwa – Bhagirathi and Dasrathi, are in their forties and migrate to work in the brick kilns of Uttar Pradesh. Their daughter Bhagawati, 43, is married and lives in the neighbouring village. Their 19-year-old grandson Mitram works in a factory in Tamil Nadu. “I don’t like speaking Kharia,” he says. “I understand a little. But I am beginning to learn and follow Tamil now. I can even speak enough to get my work done,” he tells us, speaking in Chhattisgarhi.

An older grandson, Kalapram, who stays with his grandmother says, “I am used to speaking in Chhattisgarhi. Everyone here speaks that language only. So that is what comes out from my mouth too. I don’t know Kharia.”

The only time Lakheshwari gets to speak her language to her heart’s content is when she goes to her parents. “My heart fills with joy when I go to my mother and father once in two years or so, depending on the situation here. And even then it lasts only for three or four days.”

“Apan boli hirade le nikarthe, okar baat kuchhu aru hai [When you speak from your heart, it is something else].”

This story was originally reported in Hindi.

PARI's Endangered Languages Project (ELP), is part of an initiative supported by Azim Premji University. It aims to document the vulnerable languages of India through the voices and lived experiences of people who speak them.