Dreaming in Hindi by Katherine Russell Rich Page B

(But only if the effort's intensive. Experiments with students in Hungary found that at two to four hours a week, no real permeation occurred.) Study French long enough, you're no longer speaking the same English as your countrymen. In their book
Foreign Language and Mother Tongue,
linguists Istvan Kecskes and Tünde Papp argue that a German-English bilingual speaks a German that's different from that of a monolingual German speaker and an English unlike that of a native English speaker. "You can tell a French speaker who also speaks English," the British linguist Vivian Cook says. Or an English speaker who also speaks Hindi.
    "We'll see you at seven," I told Renee one day. Confused, she snapped, "Who else is coming?" Only me, and I didn't realize till I'd hung up that I'd adopted the Hindi habit of using "we" for "I" in English—more humbling, a quality that's become pleasing for how it makes me feel more connected to the world.
    Study French or English or Hindi long enough, and the way you perceive the world will change. Or so the case can be made.
    In Renee's bathroom mirror, I twist my mouth to see if, aided by weight loss, my cheekbones will stand out. Somewhat, though on the whole, my face is no different: green eyes rimmed in black, an aunt's bump on my nose, a long space above my lip. It's the same, will remain the same two weeks from now when I'm jolted from bed by the conviction it's been terribly altered: Why not? Everything else has been. But even as I get lucky—ordinary face in the mirror, just pasty at 3 A.M. —even as relief beats in my veins, I'm waiting for the day when I look and I see that I'm no longer there. A day that, when it comes, will be no less unnerving for being expected.
    In Renee's living room, it's peaceful and airy, India and sanctuary from India. Cool blue walls, dark wicker chairs, day bed beside wicker stools. Cool light, like morning no matter when I stop by. Prints of the Hindu gods, Haitian art, jazz. Afternoons when she puts on Cleo Lane, for an instant I think we'll have brunch. Instead, we drink spiced tea, and I tell her gossip from the school. Each time in the stories, everyone's a little crazier.
    "Gopal should be here in a few minutes," she says, lumbering in. Her arms appear to be so long, her fingertips nearly brush her knees, effect of old arthritis. The handsome Gopal is her rickshaw driver, but she calls him her son, a complicated affair of the heart they have going.
    "For you," she says, handing me an article on teenage suicide, text in the ongoing tutelage she's conducting with me. "They're having a real problem with that here." She sighs and takes a seat.
    Renee, late in life, has discovered her one true passion: the anthropological study of India. Sometimes her love borders on the fanatic if you don't agree with her interpretations, and then Helaena says, "Renee thinks she owns India." We both believe our proprietary stake is greater, that the language has crashed us farther in, that we pay for what claims we can make to greater knowledge by being unshielded.
    Renee, in English at all times, can start all sentences with a distancing "they," the anthropologist's pronoun. When another story of a kitchen fire appears in the paper, she can say, "They're not allowed to leave the new house once they're married. It's the culture." Kitchen fires, a particularly gruesome kind of death, occur here each year in the thousands. A new bride's in-laws, retroactively displeased with the dowry, furiously demand more—another refrigerator, more rupees—till the girl's parents balk. When it's clear the parents won't pay beyond what they already have, the husband holds the girl down while the mother-in-law, above her, tips the kerosene jar. Afterward, he'll be free to collect another dowry.
    "They aren't allowed to return home," Renee can say, expressing sympathy, but "they" aren't "me." In the study of a new language, you use all the pronouns. You say "I," you say