No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive - Mahatma Gandhi

Alright granted, Malayalam is not one of Singapore's national language but my parents could have put me for tamil right? Till today I can never agree to their logic of Mandarin being more beneficial in Singapore than tamil is. Nope, no way. Shall we all throw our culture and roots away just because of benefits? I mean you want benefits go and learn it as a 3rd language. No win no lose right?

Not just my parents, everyone! I look at my school and the number of indians and malay students learning mandarin and it makes me wonder: isn't your mother tongue precious to you? It is going to lose its value if people like you are going to go around claiming that it has no benefits in this country. What crap. A bunch of crap.

I cannot erase the look of the lady from my mind. There I was sheepishly stopping her mid-sentence to tell her that I understand her but have a problem replying her in tamil and when asked what language I speak and my ethnicity, my reply did not amuse her one bit. I thought saying that I was malayalee and not knowing tamil will let me off but WHAM! There she was, a malayalee too! And her son was learning tamil. So why am I different?

Do you understand what am trying to say? I felt quite bad, a little pai sei. And you know what? Right after that, I went straight up to one of the tamil teachers that I was close to and told her to teach me - conversational tamil. So it has been agreed upon that every Monday at 3.15pm Miss Divya will be having 15 - 20 minutes of express tamil. hehe.

One thing is for sure, my kids are going to learn tamil or even better malayalam when they finally do offer it as a 2nd language here (soon I heard!) and if need be, mandarin will be their 3rd - only if they want to.

I believe in self before others, remember? Embrace your own before another person's culture and language.

Screw benefit, its for dummies.