[Read] Hot Desk Extract: Suri Matondkar - Tongue

As part of The Wheeler Centre's Hot Desk Fellowship program, Suri Matondkar worked on Tongue, an essay collection that looks at language and identity in the Indian international student experience in Australia.

This excerpt is from an essay that explores the 'Listening' component of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). 

Recording 4: A monologue on an academic subject.

Nostalgia is a common theme in diasporic writing and also plays a vital role in the international student experience/despite being what can be termed ‘fresh’ immigrants international students are often found to be nostalgic about the life they have recently left behind/as such like all members of the diaspora the international student experience is also simultaneously rooted and reaching – steeped in memory of the past (no matter how recent) while constantly contemplating what the future holds/will there be permanence will they call their adopted countries home?/thus for the diasporic international student the present is simply a vehicle to reach that elusive hope/ in all this they are constantly facing the pressures of their moment in time/ the same issues that native individuals who inhabit the same moment and place will face/job/money/job/money/job/fear/love/loss/cost of living rising/salary staying low/however as immigrants – whether permanent or temporary – international students will also be exposed to the usual immigration threats/ accused of nefarious schemes to steal from the people of the country they inhabit although the only people they are really stealing from is themselves/giving pieces of their identity away in the hope that there will be a positive resolution if sufficient tax is paid/ the creature such individuals best resemble is an ouroboros eating itself/their thoughts forever tracking a vicious circle that does not stop – asking themselves if their decisions will be worth it in the end/what can be defined as an ‘end’ they often ask/their conversations are loops wearing the same beaten paths/governed by subclass/anxious queries about the stage an application has reached/what are the benefits of taking the regional path/is it worth doing the early childhood diploma?

Additionally despite the prominent nostalgic theme that runs through their accounts the international student may also resemble a newborn adult/staggering through puberty once more/learning and unlearning things/prodding at the limits of the world/chewing up and spitting out opinions/hesitant to talk about the politics of the new place they inhabit when they are a political issue themselves/ought they speak of settler culture when they are attempting to be settlers as well?/slowly learning that there are flaws in their understanding of the world/their own privilege/at interviews and family gatherings they may perform a speech they have perfected/about how they pursued this dream because of some utopian future that is nowhere to be found/assuring listeners it was a selfless decision made to provide a better life for the ones that would come/for the children they will never have and do not want/as such the international student is often a master of deception constantly deceiving themselves/everyone/in rare moments of honesty they will admit if the want they experience were easy to kill it would be buried by now/instead they stay put trapped in glass caskets of their own design/can look through at a world where their future is secure/ but cannot claw through to that other side.