Accented

My accent sums up my existence, a microcosm of my journey. It is an Indian accent, a Bombay accent. It is light, and fairly clean, but still a "non-native" version of English. Which is ironic, as English is essentially my native tongue, a language I spoke exclusively in school, and a language I spoke even at home, most of the time.

To an Indian listener, it spells out my background, in detail. It is an educated accent - that of cricket commentators, television journalists, and theater actors. 

It is flatly correct in its Indian-ness, lacking the clipped inflections of a British voice or the softer undulations of an American one. It carries the traces of many different mother tongues - parents', friends', teachers'.

It used to trace out British pronunciations in a subcontinental mold, but a few American ones have crept in. Schedules have become "skedjuls", and jewellery is now "jool-ry", but I still stumble over the pronounced O's of celebratory, circulatory, and respiratory. Some colloquialisms have altered as well - I stand in line (except on trips to India, where I look for the queue in vain), ride an elevator to my apartment rather than taking the lift to my parents' flat, and dine with silverware, not cutlery.

Nevertheless, my accent is still largely unchanged, and carries expressions and inflections unique not just to my city and country, but even specifically to my school. Put me with my school mates from fifteen years ago, and you will hear the sameness.

It also carries my own idiosyncrasies - words I learned from the printed page that I mispronounce, words I did finally learn that sound too rehearsed, little interjections from long-forgotten friends that entered my lexicon and stuck there.

I will never deliberately change my accent to match my surroundings, and I will not make my speech into an act of theater or mimicry. It is my truth, my story.