Abhijit Naskar's Blog - Posts Tagged "multilingualism"

Turkish is the language of love,
Spanish is the language of revolution.
Swedish is the language of resilience,
English is the language of translation.
Portuguese is the language of adventure,
German is the language of discipline.
French is the language of passion,
Italian is the language of cuisine.
With over 7000 languages in the world,
Handful of tongues fall short in a sonnet.
But you can rest assured of one thing,
Every language does something the very best.
Each language is profoundly unique in its own way.
When they come together, they light the human way.

There is a reason I never translate my works,
You can translate information but not sentiment.
So I carve humanity with not one but many tongues,
Yet due to alphabetical wall, much remain unspoken.
Human and culture must grow together in harmony,
All traditions of stagnation must be thrown away.
If a human can come forward across conditioning,
Why can’t a culture do the same and meet halfway!
I sacrificed my language so I could feel you better,
Now I can’t read the tongue of Tagore I was raised in.
Such an uncultured poet whose culture is the world,
Asks the cultures with borders just one little thing.
Take some lessons from Mustafa Kemal in modernizing.
A culture is enhanced, not diminished, by latinizing.

Everybody loves Rumi,
I learnt his tongue,
So I could pick up where he left off.
Better than basking in borrowed light,
Is to be an original light to the world.

Everybody yells, viva la libertad,
I learnt el idioma, so I could
humanize the paradigm of revolution.
Everybody loves Indus valley diversity,
Annitiki munde anni shaashtralu nerchkunnanu,
So I’m never out of spice for my humanitarianism.

Everybody loves boasting about their culture,
I spent years making all the cultures my own.
Thus my strength was amplified a thousand folds,
My sight expanded beyond all norms of vision known.

Polyglots have more fun – there is no question.
When science, poetry and polyglottery come together,
That’s the beginning of a paradigm bending revolution.

I have many names,

Sometimes I am Hometown Human,
Sometimes I am Mucize Insan,
Sometimes I am Ingan Impossible,
Sometimes I am Mukemmel Musalman,

Sometimes I am Dervish Advaitam,
Sometimes I am Bulldozer on Duty,
Sometimes I am Corazon Calamidad,
Sometimes I am High Voltage Habib,

Sometimes I am Himalayan Sonneteer,
Sometimes I am The Gentalist,
Sometimes I am Divane Dynamite,
Sometimes I am Rowdy Scientist.

These all look and sound so different,
because you are distant in culture.
Move past the circus of manmade caves,
within every heart you’ll find a Naskar.

Call it Naskar, Shams or Adi Shankara,
it is all but one spirit of oneness.
Wherever the fire of integration
takes hold, there emerges Vicdansaadet.

When I wanna pen something extremely personal, without actually revealing anything, I just write it in spanish or turkish. If you wanna study the mountain, study the mainstream work – but if you wanna learn about the person, study the turkish and spanish portion of my work.

That’s why most of the titles of my works are in turkish or spanish – because I can’t write a single word unless I feel the title boiling in my blood – and although English is unofficially the first language of earth, because of its savage imperialist history, it is neither the profoundest nor the most beautiful language on earth.

Does that mean, we should wipe out english from the world altogether? Of course not – that would be yet another boneheaded exercise in bigotry and intolerance. Instead, what’s really needed is a genuine humane intention to create a truly magnificent multilingual society – towards a multicultural world. Learn to look beyond the puny confines of one petty language, because the world is too grand to be wasted in the gutter of one language and one culture. Every culture is my culture, every country is mine – defiant descendants of divided ancestors, hand in hand we shall fly.

Call me misafir, call me göçmen,
This heart of mine is always migrant.
Şan ve şöhrete ben muhtaç değilim,
Benim derdim dünya, dünya dermanım.

Call me gypsy, or call me refugee,
This heart of mine is always migrant.
I’ve got no use for silicon or gold,
World is my bane, world, my ointment.

In Sanskrit I am Abhijit,
In English I am Victor.
In Arabic I am Ghalib,
In History I am Reformer.

Call me whatever you like,
Befitting your culture.
I have no reservations,
Above my human nature.

So many tongues, as many names –
Some call agua, some call pani.
Conquer the tongue, spirit is the same –
Some dub it divine, I live as humanity.

The biggest requirement of learning is to know your limits of the moment. Let me elaborate with an example. Alongside my mainstream works, I have wanted to create complete works in turkish and spanish for several years. And few years back, with my rather limited experiential understanding of both languages, I even took it upon myself to do so, but I got stuck on the very first page. Why? Because it is one thing to pen occasional gems in another language, and totally different to release an entire work in that language. I was ready at heart, but not at brain. So, instead of writing whole works in these languages, I simply made turkish and spanish a joyful addition to my mainstream work – however the original linguistic and cultural intention kept reflecting in the titles of works, such as Aşkanjali, The Gentalist, Gente Mente Adelante, Mucize Insan and so on. It was not until late 2023 that my brain finally caught up with my heart, and delivered the first complete original turkish and spanish Naskarean works to the world.

Know your strongholds, they’ll take you far. Know your shortfalls, they’ll take you farther. Strongholds help you enhance your predominant capacities, whereas shortfalls help you unfold new possibilities – they help you unfold new vistas of human endeavor.

“Language is magic, culture is magic,
I wield that magic in my breath.
My brain is a symphony of portals,
each transcending past exclusivity,
into distinct linguocultural awareness.”

“Sonett von El Dorado

Wo ist Eldorado?
Es ist kein Ort,
es ist eine Person.
Wo ist das Himmelreich?
Der Himmel ist kein Ort,
der Himmel sind Menschen.

Wo können wir Freude finden?
Nicht der Markt,
Frieden liegt in guten Taten.
Wo finden wir Gesundheit?
Gesundheit liegt in der Einfachheit,
nicht in Maschinen.

Wo können wir Mut finden?
Mut kommt vom Charakter,
nicht von der Bank.
Was ist der Weg zum Fortschritt?
Nicht durch Luxus,
Fortschritt kommt durch Kollektivität.

Je geringer die Bedürfnisse,
desto besser das Leben.
Verliere dich unter Menschen,
der Weg nach vorne ist Liebe.”

“The world is swarming with snakes,
In your soul brews the antidote.
Churn your doubts, burn your dread,
One gentle gaze sanitizes the cosmos.”

“They ask me, why aren’t you still properly known in the mainstream! Well, the Himalayas have been standing for 40 million years, yet it’s only in the last century that humans first climbed Everest. They are oblivious of me, because once you get addicted to the transcendental terrains of the Himalayas, all your superficial little molehills will crumble to dust.”

How come we can fit the world in our pocket, but not in our heart! Learning a language is one of the tangible endeavors to help eliminate hate from the world. One small step towards a language is one giant leap towards inclusion.

I don’t need to write in all these languages of the world – those who care, will find a way. I write in more than one language because I want to. I want to leave at least something extremely personal for every culture in the world – that is, for as many cultures as I humanly can.

However in the end, the universal spirit of love, light and oneness transcends language and culture, and finds a home in the heart of every conscientious human being – and that’s what counts. It’s the bridge that counts, not the shape it comes in.