My ajji has no recipes. She has a language, and I'm slowly losing it.

I'm in my second year of NEET prep, sitting in my room in Mangaluru, and the thing I think about most at night isn't an organic chemistry mechanism. It's my ajji's hands, mixing batter for neer dosa without a single measuring cup.

Let me explain.

The recipe that isn't a recipe

My grandmother makes the best neer dosa, and a steamed rice dumpling called kotte kadubu, which is cooked inside a jackfruit-leaf basket. I asked her once, "Ajji, how much rice, how much water?"

She looked at me like I'd asked her how much air to breathe. "Swalpa nodi, aagutte." Roughly: look a little, it will happen. Another time: "Tumba beda, swalpa saaku." Not too much, a little is enough.

Her instructions, if I wrote them honestly, would look like this:

• "Soak the rice till it feels soft between your fingers."
• "Grind until it is the colour of a ripe coconut milk." (Obviously nobody has ever put that in a textbook.)
• "The batter should be thin, like water. When it falls from the ladle, it should run, not drop."
• "Heat the pan until a drop of water runs around and dances." (I looked this up later. It's called the Leidenfrost effect: on a very hot surface, the water drop floats on a layer of its own vapour. My ajji has been doing physics for sixty years with no textbook.)

None of this is in grams. All of it is in senses: touch, sound, colour, smell. And the language she uses for it is Kannada, with words that don't translate cleanly. When she says a dish is aayitu (done), she doesn't mean a timer rang, she means it smells right.

What is actually getting lost

I speak Kannada at home with Amma and Ajji, but I think in English when I study. All my science words, "mitochondria", "refractive index", "hydrogen bond", I know in English. I don't know their Kannada names. I realised that when Ajji asked, "What are you reading, maga?" and I couldn't explain my biology chapter to her in her own language. She just nodded and said, "tumba oduttiya" (you study a lot). I wanted to cry a little.

Mangaluru is also a place with Tulu, Konkani and Beary spoken around me. I understand more than I speak. When my friends speak Tulu at the market, I catch maybe half. Every year it's a little less, because school, coaching and the phone are in English.

The "regional language vs English" argument

I know this one is a fight in many families, so here's my honest opinion, which might change.

English isn't the enemy. It's how I read my NEET books, how I'll study medicine, how I'll talk to people across India. I'm not giving it up and nobody should be made to feel guilty for it.

But I don't think it's either/or. My mother tongue is how I hug my grandmother in words. It's the way my family jokes. A recipe isn't just ingredients; it's the way she says "swalpa nodi", the sentence, the tone, the hand on my shoulder. When the language goes, those things go with it, and no app can bring it back.

My teacher once said children understand new ideas faster in the language they speak at home. I'm not an expert on that, so I won't claim it as fact. But I do notice that when Ajji explains something in Kannada, I understand it with my whole body in a way I don't with English.

What I started doing

1. Ajji recipe nights. Every Sunday, one dish. I stand next to her with a notebook and write down her words exactly, in Kannada script as best I can, and under it what it means in English and what quantity I think she used. After she's done, I weigh the rice and measure the water so there's a rough measurement too.
2. A word list. I'm keeping a page called "Ajji's words" with new ones each week. Last week I added bisi bisi (hot hot) and sakkath (excellent).
3. Recording her. With her permission, short voice notes on my phone. She enjoys it more than I thought. She narrates like a cooking show host.
4. Learning science words in Kannada. I looked up "chlorophyll" and "cell" in Kannada for fun. It's weirdly satisfying to tell Ajji about the leaf in her language.

What I realised

I'm preparing for a competitive exam in a language that isn't hers. I'm also trying to carry something that doesn't fit in an exam syllabus. And honestly, doing both is making my drop year feel less lonely.

If you have a grandparent with a special way of cooking or speaking, ask them for one recipe before you're "too busy". They won't be hurt if you write it down. They'll be happy someone wanted to know.