troop

when the word troop comes up, you automatically think of group, set, cluster... and as simple as a circle of friends. I've always had a good friend circle. I was born and raised in Kolhapur, India. So, where I lived, everyone spoke marathi. Even the non-marathi's knew how to speak the language. But when I moved to the United states, the only marathi spoken people I knew were my family members. Now, everyone at school only spoke english. So it was either speak english and be their friend or shut up. I picked up the language along with the accent (rather i tried) and I succeded. I think.

Well, over the weekend, I was on the phone with my sister in law who lives in bombay. Her daugther (my neice) Anisha is only 3 years old. She goes to school for 2 hours a day. Bombay being the mixing bowl.. full of different types of people who speak differentl languages. It's understandable that the schools are full of variety of people.

Anisha's parents are very strict about the fact that they want their daughter to speak good marathi. Many kids in bombay only speak english and absolutely have no clue about their mother tongue. Obviously Anisha's parents do not want anisha to be one of those "english-spoken kids with no knowledge of own mother lang."

Understandable.

But, is that a good thing? Is Anisha understanding this already and taking actions which she shouldnt? Does she know that she is only suppose to talk to people in Marathi? How is she handling this you ask? .... Well.... there are 20-30 some students in her class. She is in school for 2 hours a day. The classroom is full of all types of kids. Come to realize, Anisha and the others somehow formed a troop of their own. Troops..which only speak in a specific language. Anisha now only has friends who speak marathi. There is another group of kids who only speak gujurati, then punjabi, so on and so forth.

I wonder, how many kids did she try to talk to before she realized that she doesnt understand them. How does a 3 year old do the "same language spoken hunt?" Amazing how she made the decision of blocking everyone else out but the Marathi kids. Howz the brain working? Whats the troop sorting process? I wonder! ...