Why me? Why English?

When Afsar approached me about writing a monthly column, I agreed, but several questions immediately surfaced: Why me? Why English? And what, exactly, should I write?

One of my most cherished childhood memories is listening to All India Radio with my father. We tuned in specifically for the “special news” programs to hear public figures speak. However, the moment a speech switched to English, we tuned out. With only a third-grade education, my father didn’t understand a word of it, and I, too, had no ear for the language then.

Around those years, I read a book about Alluri Seetharama Raju. The author mentioned that despite his education, Alluri disliked English because it was the language imposed on us by the British. That argument appealed to me greatly. I felt oddly comfortable in not knowing English.

By the time I finished tenth grade in Tadikonda, my stance hadn’t softened, even though I had learned to play the academic game. I actually ranked first in the state on the English examination—a feat that was likely less a testimony to my fluency and more a reflection on the rote nature of our exams. Just two years earlier, I had written my first sentence in English. I still remember it because it sounded so strange and deliberate then: “The water was boiling.”

Even during IIT, I held on to my Telugu roots rather fiercely. I read Telugu books regularly. I wrote in Telugu. In those days, I usually won any Telugu writing competition I entered. Only toward the final years of college did I begin reading English literature seriously. Like many students of that age, I moved through the classics with enthusiasm and very little restraint.

Only after coming to the United States did English slowly become the language of my daily life. It began with joining the Book of the Month Club, then wandering through libraries such as the Rice University Library, the Houston Public Library, and even the Carl Jung Library. It continued through long visits to second-hand bookstores where one could buy books for a dollar or two and return with a bag full of authors one had only heard about earlier. Somewhere along the way, English stopped feeling foreign.

Somewhere along the way, English ceased to feel foreign. It is a journey, perhaps, that many readers of this magazine share. For me, Telugu remained the language of memory, instinct, irritation, and affection; English became the lens through which I saw new worlds.

In the early years of writing in English, I discovered that translating vocabulary was the easiest part. Thought itself was organized differently. Steeped in Telugu literary traditions, I initially relied on emotional emphasis and descriptive force, whereas English prose demanded a different rigor: structure, logical progression, and evidence. Every language carries its own habits of thought and its own expectations from the writer.

Later, while reading linguistics, I came across the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: the idea that language shapes thought. I do not know how strongly that theory holds in its strict form, but it certainly felt true in experience. English sometimes creates a certain distance from emotion. Telugu permits intimacy and texture differently. Each language illuminates some things while obscuring others.

That perhaps also answers the question of why English, especially in a magazine like Saaranga which has an English section. Many of us now inhabit multiple worlds at once. We move between Telugu and English, between local memory and global systems, often within the same day.

That leaves the final question: what should I write?

Here I could use some help from readers.

Many of the forces shaping our lives today lie outside what we traditionally consider literary subjects. Engineering education changes the ambitions of entire families. Software jobs in America reshape life in small towns in Andhra. Television changed the rhythm of evenings; smartphones changed silence itself. Coaching centers alter childhood. AI may alter what students think education is for. Migration changes language inside homes.

These are not usually treated as literary subjects. Yet they increasingly shape the emotional and social world from which literature itself emerges.

I do not particularly want to become a columnist reacting to headlines every month. I would rather use books, trends, observations, memories, and contemporary events as entry points into larger questions about how society changes quietly over time. Some columns may wander into economics, technology, migration, language, education, or American life. Others may simply begin with an old memory and follow where it leads.

Perhaps that is enough direction for a beginning.

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