The Language of Dreams: A Conversation with Katherine Russell Rich

In Dreaming in Hindi, Katherine Russell Rich takes a linguistic journey through India.

Your book recounts your time spent in India in a total-immersion Hindi program. Why did you choose Hindi over another language—it's a bit of a cliché, isn't it, to go to India and reinvent yourself?

I happened to get plonked down in India first in 2000: the New York Times sent me to interview the Dalai Lama's doctor. And I was just so gob-smacked when I went there. I started to take lessons in Hindi and it was kind of a joke. The long arm of India just grabbed me at that moment. I moved to India not because of incense and temples but to master the subjunctive. Hindi is close to Sanskrit. It's such a gorgeous language. It's in our stem cells. I wasn't thinking in terms of reinventing myself. I was living a very prescribed life: I got married, got divorced, was on this career path and never busted loose. I think everyone at some point in one's life has to develop a passion and run with it. And I never went all the way until I did with Hindi.

You write: “I no longer had the language to describe my own life. So I decided I'd borrow someone else's.” What do you mean?

There is a huge controversy in linguistics [whether] learning another language will make you a different person. Each language makes you say something a different way and makes you think differently. You are obliged by the language. In Hindi, for example, you suddenly find yourself unable to say, “I own anything.” You can't own anything in your mind. Little by little I was being altered by the language. I became less egocentric—you don't say “I,” you say “we”—and I began to have a sense of being connected to the place.

What was it like being an American woman in this traditional culture?

Western stereotypes about women abounded—Indians learn what they see in movies. The fifth day after I got there, the World Trade Center blew up. I couldn't even say, “Pass the salt,” in Hindi. The attack inflamed the anti-Muslim sentiments in the area where I was. The Hindu fundamentalists do not like outsiders, so I was lumped with that. I was assaulted several times.

But you've been back.

I love the country. I feel I became this other person that now has no other expression. That part of me can't be made to exist here [in the U.S.] because there's nobody who understands the way I was altered by everything there. There is a Chinese curse: may you have an interesting life. And there in India I certainly did.