Back to Come on Kannadiga

This is a message for all my dear Kannadigas or should I say English speaking Kannadigas?

The reason I am writing this in English is because I want to reach everyone, I mean all the Karnataka people across the globe. You know what, over the past 2 -3 years this thought just kept haunting me .Over past years I had been abroad a few times and traveled to other parts of India. I just could not digest one thing " Where are all the Kannadigas? " , " why are we shying away from everyone ? " , " why do we have complex while we speak our language , are we ashamed or something ? " Characteristically Kannadigas, I think are very soft/nice people. They are intelligent lot too just like others but you know what the fact that we are very hospitable and accommodative has not worked for us. 

We are more than willing to learn others' language (which I feel is not a bad idea) but are we encouraging the others to learn about our language and culture? Have a look other Punjabis, Gujuratis, Bengalis, Mallus, Marathis, Tamils to name a few. They are so much unlike us!!!! All these guys are good but they are better than us in one important thing i.e. in having the pride of their respective language and culture. They flaunt this aspect. You watch TV or any Movie, you notice that people from our state are never mentioned anywhere. Of course that does not make us inferior in any way. But don’t you think its better to have our presence felt than being ignored???? 

I have seen people coming to Bangalore from various parts of India to work here (and why not Bangalore is the IT capital now) and I have noticed how they support each other of their state or language, almost have a bias. They speak in their language with so much of pride and talk so highly of their state and culture. And what do we guys do? Listen to them, watch them and envy them. It looks like we are all mere passive spectators. I know everyone one of us has our share of patriotic feeling within but we should not forget or ignore our own language. Are all the people from Karnataka sleeping? Don’t we have a fire in our belly? I have seen heard bitter things happening to our folks.

To give you an idea, once a friend of mine (S/W engineer at Wipro) was asked the location of a place by a stranger on the way. When he replied in Kannada to give him the directions, the stranger had frown and asked “why the hell are you speaking Kannada? What would you if you were in his shoes? ...... You know this guy bashed him up because he could stand anyone speaking shit about his language. The outsiders look at localites as if they are a piece of waste people. The idea here is why should we react to only situations like this? It can’t be fixed by one or two guys. 

Today in the corporate world, one can notice that a boss from a particular state is invariably biased towards his own guys who are from the same state. WHY SHOULD WE BE VICTIMISED?? DO you think any one of us can do the same thing in other places and get away with this? NO!!! First of all I don’t encourage such a thing to our guys but at the same time let’s not be gullible to these instances. Guys/Girls come on if we don’t care for our language, who will??? The least we can give back to our place and language a bit of respect and protection.

 Things we can do to contribute

Ø       Speak Kannada with pride. Maybe make it sound fashionable.

Ø       Have a feeling of oneness among other Kannadigas especially people who are staying away, I mean abroad. For that you don’t have to be unfairly biased but have a little bit of concern and respect.

Ø       And Girls, I somehow get the feeling that you hesitate to speak in Kannada. I don’t understand why. I think girls need to support this cause too.

Ø       Respect other languages and their culture but please protect Kannada.

Ø       We need not be fanatics or/and overly obsessive but nevertheless we shall wear the spirit on our sleeve.

Ø       Let’s start people!!! It might be humble start but we will get there slowly one day. I hope I have generated at least a trace of patriotism in all of you. Please forward this to all the Kannadigas and spread the message.

(Name not mentioned)
Bangalore
save_namma_kannada@yahoo.co.in

Back to Come on Kannadiga