The Enigma of the Term ‘A Native Speaker’ of a Language

Abstract

I am Indian, very brown,
born in Malabar,
I speak three languages,
write in two, dream in one.
Don’t write in English, they said,
English is not your mother-tongue.
Why not leave me alone,
Critics, friends, visiting cousins,
Everyone of you?
Why not let me speak in any language
I like? The language I speak
Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses
All mine, mine alone. It is half English,
half Indian, funny perhaps, but it is honest,
It is human as I am human,
don’t you see?
It voices my joys, my longings,
my hopes, and it is as useful to me as
cawing is to crows or roaring to lions,
It is human speech, the speech of the
mind that is here and not there,
a mind that sees and hears and
Is aware …