Even today, 25 years later, every time I travel from Kolkata – where I now live – to Hyderabad, ask me to read the ads on the buses and billboards in Telugu or newspaper headlines, and I’ll rattle the lines without blinking. But if anyone on the street asks for directions in the south Indian language, I’d neither be able understand nor reply. This is simply because I learnt Telugu, “by heart”.

Back in 1956, linguistic nationalism led to the creation of Andhra Pradesh. The movement for statehood was based on carving a separate state for people who spoke Telugu. The capital shifted from the Telugu-speaking zone of Kurnool to the once Nizam-controlled territory of Hyderabad. In Hyderabad, more than 50% spoke Telugu, but were equally at ease with Dakhni, a variety of Hindustani that’s an easy blend of Hindi and Urdu. Today, Telugu is compulsory in schools of the now-divided states of Telangana and Andhra, which together have a population that’s larger than all of France, South Korea and Turkey. At the English medium school I attended, Hindi, my mother tongue, was my second language, and Telugu became my third language. It’s a language that I have never really needed to use.

Listening and talking, these two activities, underpin each other. Without practising actual conversations in a language, one will always be at loss for words. Any attempt at conversations in Telugu, say, with airport staff or vegetable vendors, still has me mumbling slowly. With my straight As, I had assumed I was a bit of a prodigy who had aced the secret learning by rote strategy. That’s until I went to my school reunion a couple of years ago. It emerged that while some students learnt the language from their local domestic help and others took tuitions, most had “by-hearted” it. The trick was constant repetition. Each of the Telugu rhymes, names of seasons, days of week or even long phrases were repeated for hours, until they glided off our tongues.

Telugu wasn’t the only third language; there was Sanskrit and Urdu too. Another friend studied Arabic as a fourth language. Her parents wanted her to be able to read the Quran. I dared to ask her, in rather hushed tones, about the point of reading a text without comprehending it. “Back then, it felt like compulsion. But today, it is preparing for a future: a larder of sorts, for those extended periods of hunger when reciting it would bring comfort to me, like a mothers breast. The Arabic sounds, in the first chapter known as the The Key or Al-Fatiha, when recited, is mathematically coded. Your lips touch 19 times, represent a numerical Al-Hamdu, Na’budu, Mustaqim. The Sura 1 is mathematically coded: when you recite it, it reverberates a celestial sound,” she said.

A day after that school reunion in 2016, I strolled down to my neighbourhood bookshop and went to the regional languages section. Perhaps idi and vaari would charm my more evolved mind, or tug at my heart with its heavenly sounds. There was Vennello Aadapilaa by Yanadamoori and Rendu Rellu Aaru by Malladi and a scattering of a few other books. But where were Gogu Shyamala, or Chalam Or Jajula Gowri, the contemporary Telugu authors that had been making waves on the literary circuit? I finally picked a popular classic, Boya Jangaiah (Jatra), a novel about life in the villages of Telangana dealing with superstitions and minorities, a novel rich in anecdotes. I only managed to squeeze past the first chapter. There was just so much to do in preparation for my next book launch! The following month, I attempted it again, but my sister was in town so I ended up spending quality time with her. The book lay on my bed side table for many months but something always came up: I had to finish Urvashi Butalia’s essays for work, and then there was a lot of reading to finish on JStor. Someone had gifted me a copy of The Hungry Tide by Amitava Ghosh and insisted I prioritize it. The last time I tried to finish reading it, I couldn’t find it. This year, at the airport, I picked up The Greatest Telugu Stories ever Told, a lovely anthology translated by Krishnamoorty and Dasu, and read it cover to cover. I’m now resigned to the possibility that Jatra may forever be a great novel that I couldn’t finish reading.

Nidhi Dugar Kundalia’s latest book is White as Milk and Rice- Stories of India’s Isolated Tribes

The views expressed are personal