How and why I am mad about Sanskrit

Being linguistically wired has been engraved into my personality since long. Love for language has helped me learn Hindi, Sanskrtam, a little bit of Odia and Kannada, and of course, English and Telugu (my mother tongue). But Sanskrtam is my bias! (I assume, dear reader, that you're familiar with my madness about Sanskrtam, or it has atleast caught your eye in my blog's intro.)

There is no particular point of time when I 'didn't know Sanskrtam at all' and there will never be a point of time when I will have 'known everything in Sanskrtam'. That's what language is. You can never 'know' it fully. With each passing day, you will pick up something - an interesting usage, a beautiful phrase - and develop on your own vocabulary, hone your skills, and write (or speak) better than you could yesterday. Similarly, there was no point of time when I didn't know any Sanskrtam, because at the end of the day, if I knew Telugu and Hindi, and if I did know some shlokas, I did know something. But yes, there were some landmark events which helped me learn and hone my Sanskrtam!

I remember this particular event vividly. I was in fourth grade and the academic year was just about to culminate. Starting from grade five, we would have Third Language classes in our school - an extra language apart from English and a second language (Hindi or Kannada). Up until 2018, there two options for Third Language classes - the subject you didn't take as second language (Kannada for a Hindi student and Hindi for a Kannada student), and Sanskrtam. My sister took up Sanskrtam, and in those days, if anyone would ask me what I'd pick as a third language, I (as a third or second grader) would not see the point of the question. 'Sanskrtam, of course!'

Then, round the corner was the next academic year, and guess what? The school introduced a new option - French. I assume that you'll know what the obvious hot pick was! I was stuck in the horns of a dilemma.
I came home that day, clutching the third-language confirmation circular. I asked my father, then - 'Can I take French for my third language?' I obviously didn't want to be left out in a class that had the majority of its strength take French (fourth grade logic - I need to pick what my friends pick.) My father reflected upon what I said. 'Hmm... Why don't you take Sanskrit?' he asked. 
I paused for a moment.
'Okay,' I said, and that was that. The rest, as they say, is history. 

And though the pedagogical method of teaching Sanskrtam in schools is not very encouraging for students who wish to pursue the subject (and are welcomed (warmly) by tantalising tables which need to be learned by rote for the exams), I was still able to grasp some tidbits of the language on my own accord.

Fast forward to a year or two later, when my father saw something astounding at an event in December or January 2018-19.
He was away at a town in Odisha to attend a Rāma-sāmrājya-pattābhishēkam, where Lord Rāma would be given the sacerdotal bath (abhishēkam) before His coronation. There, he saw two gentlemen - among whom one knew no language but Malayalam and Sanskrtam - conversing in fluent and delightful Sanskrtam! Indeed, ladies and gentlemen. They were veritably talking in the language that social textbooks say, was Brahmanical, tyrannical, esoteric, elitist and a ton of baseless bogus bunkum. It was testimony that the Language of the Gods is just as much a language of the people, too. 

When he returned to Bangalore, he returned inspired. In fact, we started speaking broken Sanskrtam at home in conversation (credits to some small Samskrita Bharati booklets - all the reference material we had at the time), confidently making blunders which seem unbelievable now! Recently, I saw my old, old Sanskrit textbook's cover page, on which was written, 'संस्कृतभाषस्य पाठ्यपुस्तकः' - messing up the gender of both words terribly! In reality, it was supposed to be 'संस्कृतभाषायाः पाठ्यपुस्तकम्' - 'भाषा' is the word for 'language' in female gender, and 'भाषायाः' meant 'of the language', while 'book' was in neuter gender as 'पुस्तकम्', not in the masculine as 'पुस्तकः'! 

So that was how it began, and that was the first big jump in the journey of madness due to/for/from/of Sanskrit. I used to Google different words and verbs and I just taught myself some basic tenses and words. 

When seventh grade started that year, I had already filled in all the Sanskrit exercises in the textbook by July, when we were still doing the first chapter - textbook-level teaching seemed pretty basic afterwards. 

Then in October, a gentleman visited our place and told my father about weekly meetings in his apartment complex - weekly Sanskrtam sessions. This wasn't exactly a Sanskrtam class, it was like a discussion platform - you write something in Sanskrtam and read it out, or you just describe your week in Sanskrtam - about anything. Since then I've been speaking, writing, even teaching Sanskrtam to my relatives! 

None of this would have been possible without my mentor and without the help of many others devoted to the language, especially my father. I can gladly say that I've moved on from संस्कृतभाषस्य पाठ्यपुस्तकः to writing stories, articles and poems in prosody in Sanskrtam. And you will too, just if you start writing, nay, speaking, or atleast, just thinking about Sanskrtam...
 

Comments

Post a Comment

PLEASE DO NOT FEEL SHY to drop in a comment here! Someone here is excited to know what you think!