I Love You..... Thank You!

My Mother-in-law studied Kannada Medium, and hence not very well-versed in the English language. Her first granddaughter, that is my daughter, grew up the first six years of her life in the United States, and hence the English language came naturally for her. Often times, my wife and I played the part of translators so that they two could understand one another. But at other times they managed themselves. It was quite a sight to watch these two far end of the spectrum of generations communicating with one another, and sometimes hilarious. 

In the local language Kannada, the letter "L" has two variations - one where the tongue just touches palate (usually depicted with lower-case "l") and another where the tongue rolls inwards and uncoils (usually depicted with upper-case "L"). In Kannada, the word "HeLu" means "to tell", where as "Helu" means "to poop"! So there is a ton of difference when the pronunciation changes even a bit! And, since English has no mastery on tongue-rolling antics, my daughter at that time always asked her granny to "Helu" while she meant her to tell and this used to set us all into splits, much to her chagrin as she used to wonder what wrong she said!

Likewise, whenever Tontu used to say "I Love You" to her granny, my MIL - without much knowledge of how things work usually - always used to reply back "Thank You", and this caused lot of laughter. And then, my daughter used to explain that instead of 'Thank You', she should say "I Love you too".

Cut to the present. My wife and I came across number of articles and videos where Sadhguru talks about love. One such article is about True Love. He mentions clearly here that "Love is not something that you do; love is the way you are". If you are in such a state that you can be loved unconditionally, or you have become so lovable, and because of that someone says "I Love You", then obviously the response should indeed be "Thank You"! 

Perhaps my MIL might not be an English literate but knew this all along, inherently. 

The last laugh was on us, the educated.