I'm half Telugu. My mom is Telugu and dad, a Maharashtrian. I was

Host: The night had fallen softly over the rooftops of Mumbai, and the city lights were bleeding into the Arabian Sea — a shimmer of amber, blue, and loneliness. From a small balcony of a modest apartment, one could hear the sounds of languages colliding — Hindi songs from the radio next door, Marathi curses from the street below, Telugu laughter from the phone of a neighbor, and the eternal English murmur of the city trying to sound cosmopolitan.

Jack and Jeeny sat on two plastic chairs, a half-empty bottle of Old Monk between them. The ceiling fan inside was humming, but outside the air was still, thick with the smell of rain, sea salt, and memories.

Host: The world seemed small and infinite at once — a thousand tongues, a thousand histories, all trying to fit into one city, one body, one voice.

Jeeny: “Harshvardhan Rane once said — ‘I’m half Telugu. My mom is Telugu and dad, a Maharashtrian. I was brought up in Gwalior. I was exposed to English, Hindi, and Marathi. I heard my mom speak to her family in Telugu, so I got the hang of it.’”

Jack: “So, he’s multilingual. What’s the philosophy in that? Everyone in India grows up juggling languages. It’s just survival.”

Jeeny: “It’s more than that, Jack. It’s about identity. About belonging to everywhere and nowhere at the same time. When you grow up between languages, you don’t just speak differently — you feel differently.”

Host: A train horn wailed in the distance, echoing across the night like a call from another life. Jack lit a cigarette, the flame briefly illuminating his face — sharp, tired, haunted by thoughts he didn’t want to share.

Jack: “Or maybe you just become good at pretending. At switching tones, switching words, switching selves. You talk to your mother one way, your boss another, your friends another. That’s not identity, Jeeny — that’s camouflage.”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. That’s survival — but it’s also art. When you grow up hearing your mother’s lullabies in Telugu and your father’s scoldings in Marathi, and your school essays in English — you learn to live between worlds. You learn empathy without realizing it.”

Jack: “Empathy? You call this linguistic schizophrenia empathy?”

Jeeny: “Yes. Because every language carries a soul, Jack. A way of seeing the world. When you can speak in more than one, you carry more than one soul. You start to understand that reality isn’t one language deep — it’s layered, like music.”

Host: The rain began, soft and hesitant, tapping on the metal railing. The lights from the street blurred into a watercolor of motion. Jeeny looked out at the skyline, her eyes reflecting the city’s restlessness.

Jeeny: “You know, I grew up the same way. My father spoke Bengali, my mother Tamil. At school, everything was in English. Sometimes I’d forget which language belonged to which emotion. I’d fight in one, dream in another, pray in a third.”

Jack: “Sounds exhausting.”

Jeeny: “It was beautiful. Because it taught me that no emotion belongs to a single word. Love feels different in Tamil than it does in English. Grief sounds softer in Bengali. And guilt — guilt is universal.”

Host: Jack took a drag, the smoke curling around his face like a ghost. His eyes softened, as if a memory had slipped past his armor.

Jack: “You know, when I was a kid, my father used to work construction in Hyderabad. I didn’t understand a word people said, but I remember sitting with the laborers at lunch. They spoke Telugu, laughed loudly, called me anna. I never knew what it meant, but it made me feel… seen.”

Jeeny: “It means brother.”

Jack: “Brother…” He repeated the word slowly, like testing its taste. “Strange. Even when I didn’t understand them, I think I felt it.”

Jeeny: “That’s what I mean. Language isn’t just grammar. It’s how you connect — how you recognize yourself in someone else’s sound.”

Host: The wind picked up, rattling the metal gate, carrying the smell of wet earth. The city below seemed to quiet, as though it too had paused to listen.

Jack: “But what happens when you belong to too many tongues, Jeeny? Don’t you ever feel like you belong to none? You say ‘amma’ in one language, ‘aai’ in another, ‘mom’ in a third — and somewhere along the way, even the word for love starts feeling borrowed.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s the truth of being human — we’re all borrowed. Our languages, our names, our gods. Everything we are is an inheritance — patched, blended, translated. And maybe that’s not loss — maybe it’s grace.”

Jack: “Grace?”

Jeeny: “Yes. To belong everywhere is to be free. You stop guarding identity like a flag and start holding it like a song — something you share, not something you fight over.”

Host: The rain grew heavier, drumming against the tin roof. Jack flicked the cigarette, watching the ember fall, a small meteor against the wet dark.

Jack: “You think people will ever see it that way? That we’re not divided by our differences, but deepened by them?”

Jeeny: “Some do. Artists, travelers, dreamers. People who listen more than they speak. That’s what Harshvardhan meant, I think — not just that he learned Telugu, but that he heard it. That he let it enter him, shape him.”

Jack: “You make it sound like learning a language is a spiritual act.”

Jeeny: “Isn’t it? You enter another person’s mind when you learn their words. You start to see through their eyes. You stop being one thing and start being many — that’s as close to eternity as we get.”

Host: Jack leaned forward, his voice quieter now, softer, as if the rain had washed the rough edges away.

Jack: “Maybe that’s why I love cinema. It’s the same thing — you step into another’s world for a while. Different tongue, same heartbeat.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. Cinema, language — they’re both bridges. Between people, between histories, between selves.”

Host: The lights flickered inside the apartment, and the smell of chai from a neighbor’s kitchen drifted out. Somewhere, a child was reciting a poem — his voice small, earnest, bilingual.

Jack: “You know, sometimes I envy people with just one language. They sound so sure of themselves. So rooted.”

Jeeny: “And sometimes they envy us, Jack. Because we get to wander. To belong to everyone and to no one. To live between syllables and find home in the pauses.”

Host: The rain slowed, turning into a gentle drizzle. The sea wind carried a cool silence, and the city lights looked like stars trapped under glass.

Jack: “So, what are we then? Translators of the soul?”

Jeeny: “Maybe. Or maybe just children of echoes — learning how to love through borrowed words.”

Host: Jack smiled faintly, the kind of smile that hides a question. He poured the last of the rum into their cups, raised his, and clinked it softly against hers.

Jack: “To borrowed words, then.”

Jeeny: “To the music they make.”

Host: The camera pulls back — the balcony, the rain, the two figures framed against the city that speaks in a thousand tongues.

The screen fades to black, but the sound of the night lingers — Hindi, English, Telugu, Marathi, and the soft silence in between —
where two voices, different yet the same, had just discovered that to be many is not to be divided,
but to be whole.