After having read every Listserve email for almost two years, I thought that my turn would come sometime later in life - perhaps when I’m more settled? That’s what everyone else made me believe at least. But damn, while I’m more than happy with almost everything in life, my professional life is a big question mark! I don’t really have any advice or anything for you all so I guess I’ll just narrate a little bit of me.
I’m a 22 year old girl born and raised in New Delhi (it’s almost 46°C these days, damn summers!) - capital city of India and I’m one of those people who always knew what they wanted to do in life. So my University major was Japanese - and even though I was just fascinated by things like origami back in high school that led me to this, Japanese made me fall in love with languages. So I tried learning French and gave up mid way only to realise that my fascination was more towards languages that don’t use the Roman script. Next I took up Korean and man, don’t I love it! I want to learn Arabic next but then Esperanto looks interesting as well (any Esperanto speakers here? Would love to hear from you!). Being a polyglot is an amazing thing. I speak 4 languages right now - my mother tongue Hindi, apart from English, Japanese and Korean, and I’m still not satisfied with just these. However, it’s just a little sick how people look at languages in India. It’s a country still obsessed with orthodox careers like engineering, medical sciences, law etc. and people end up thinking that you didn’t get anywhere else to end up with a language as your major. What they don’t know is just because of this stereotype, the field remains untapped to a great extent and you can do so much more than the traditional careers if you’re good at it.
So why did I say that my professional life is a big question mark? Well, because I don't know where will I be a few months down the line and I hate this ambiguity. While I have some real amazing job offers waiting for me here, I am waiting for a small little email from the MEXT of Japan that gives me my scholarship result. I got admitted to Waseda University in Tokyo for a masters in International Relations but I still don’t know if I’ll go or not due to this scholarship result. I’ll probably have the result with me by the time this email is sent out on the Listserve though! And yes, it’s not just languages that I love. I also enjoy politics, history, cycling, running, cooking, origami and music.
Apart from this little ambiguity, life is so good I wouldn’t want to trade it for anything. I’m doing what I love to do, have an amazing family and I’m in love with the most amazing guy. I’ve been in love before and I’ve dated before, but I guess you only feel the right kind of love once in life. Of all things, it happened when I wasn’t even expecting it. How good could life be?
Drop in a little email for just about anything or if you would like to exchange language practice emails. I’ve been a silent member of the Listserve all these years but I promise I’ll reply!
PS: A big shout out to Karthik for introducing me to the Listserve and also to everyone else I asked to join the same :)
May the force be with you!
Deepali Varshney
[email protected]
New Delhi, India